RE: CVS questions

[Bulgrien, Kevin]

> I had explored the ideas of using branches and tags but quite 
> frankly, it was very confusing so to be on the safe side, I simply 
> cloned the 6.3 (\CVSROOT\WC6\) repository to \CVSROOT\WC7 and
> checked out WC7.

Wildcat!  I used to run a BBS for a local university in the late 80's...
I used Wildcat.  Talk about a blast from the past.  I would have had no
idea it was still around.

I'm not sure why branching is confusing.  It's very simple.

   cd /home/kbulgrien/tmp
   mkdir repository sandbox6
   cvs -d /home/kbulgrien/tmp/repository init
   cd sandbox6
   cvs -d /home/kbulgrien/tmp/repository co .
   echo "this is version 6" >source.txt
   cvs add source.txt
   cvs commit -m "v6 example" source.txt
   echo "v6.3
   echo "v6.3" >source.txt
   cvs commit -m "v6.3" source.txt
   cvs tag v6_3
   cvs tag v7_0_BEGIN
   cvs tag -b v7_0_DEVEL
   cd /home/kbulgrien/tmp
   mkdir sandbox7
   cd sandbox7
   cvs -d /home/kbulgrien/tmp/repository co -r v7_0_DEVEL .
   echo "this is the first v7 change
   echo "this is the first v7 change" >source.txt
   cvs commit -m "add v7 feature"

   /home/kbulgrien/tmp/sandbox6 contains your version 6 sources
   and sandbox7 contains your version 7 sources.  From either
   sandbox, though, you can check the differences to each other.
   For example:
   
   cd /home/kbulgrien/tmp/sandbox7
   cvs diff -r v6_3

   Keeping up with the two sources is now quite easy.

   I won't go into merging.  You could either use built in merge
   facilities of CVS, or you could even just use the differences
   and manually merge things.

> My questions:
> 
> I had been working on WC7, making all my changes for the 
> newer compiler, 
> etc, and now I am written to commit this.
> 
> 1) How should I "tag" this, what switches should I use?  do I 
> use a Branch?

The branch from 6 to 7 is made one time... other than at the point
of the branch, you tag like you always did.  As for making the branch
I always make a normal tag that shows where the branch was made and
a branch tag so that it is much easier to see differences to the
branch point - very helpful when merging changes back and forth.
 
> Which leads me to my 2nd question:
> 
> 2) Is there a "enhanced" version of CVS that allows for two different 
> "trunks" per se?

The branch checkout acts as its own "trunk" per se.  I have a hard time
visualizing what you think a dual trunk would look like.  As far as SVN
or other version controls systems go... I would think it quite obvious
that it would be a lot more difficult / time consuming to completely
change your version control system than to learn how to use branching,
even if switching over appeared/was trivial.

---
Kevin R. Bulgrien
Design and Development Engineer

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