Re: Syncing New Working Directories with an Old cvs Repository

[Mike Pumford]

> Greetings --
> 
> I have an interesting reverse-update case: my working copies are OK, but
> 
> the partition where the CVS repository is kept was formatted over by a
> buggy Red Hat 7.0 anakonda installer (fixed a day later:-).
> 
> I restored the CVS repository from its  backup, but many
> working files are now several versions ahead.  Doing "cvs up"
> seems to have overwritten newer working files -- I'd have to restore
> them again from their own backup, which is fresh.  Is it because of the
> newer date on the restored files?
> 
CVS assumes that if the version numbers differ that the server has the 
most up to date copy e.g.

server has foo.c Rev 1.3
client has foo.c Rev 1.6

server updates client back to 1.3 clobbering all the changes between 
1.3 and 1.6. I do have a patch for this which changes the behaviour of 
the server to report an error and abort the update when this case is 
detected.
A more correct fix to this would be to have the server assume 
that the client has a modified file and to bounce the client version 
back to 1.3 in the Entries file leaving the actual source file 
unmodified. This would make some file history disappear but would at 
least ensure that no user changes were destroyed.

Mike