cvs status: Can't parse date/time: `Result of merge UTC`

[Greg Ward]

I'm seeing some weird output from 'cvs status' on a conflicting file.  I
only noticed this because I have a Python library for parsing the output
of 'cvs status', and its unit test is now failing with cvs 1.12.13 on my
Debian 'unstable' machine.  It works fine with cvs 1.12.9 (Ubuntu
'dapper').

Here's the output that's causing problems:

File: conffile          Status: Unresolved Conflict

   Working revision:    1.1     cvs status: Can't parse date/time: `Result of 
merge UTC'.
Result of merge UTC
   Repository revision: 1.1     
/home/greg/src/vchacks/test/cvsroot/test/conffile,v
   Commit Identifier:   TaEwJBm6TROvkGgs
   Sticky Tag:          1.1
   Sticky Date:         (none)
   Sticky Options:      (none)

This is copy-and-pasted from a terminal.  What this doesn't show you is
the mix of stdout/stderr going on.  Perhaps if I ditched stdout it would
be more clear...

$ cvs status conffile > /dev/null
cvs status: Can't parse date/time: `Result of merge UTC'.

See?  cvs is printing an error message right in the middle of a line of
stdout.  This makes life difficult for programs that try to parse "cvs
status", since you have to merge stdout+stderr in order to do so.

Anyways, I suspect the fact that someone is attempting to interpret the
string "Result of merge UTC" is the bug here.  The fact that the error
message comes right in the middle of a line of stdout just makes that
harder to see.

Thanks --

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward                                http://www.gerg.ca/
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?