Re: Why CVSREAD?

[Richard Cobbe]

Lo, on Wednesday, January 24, David L. Martin did write:

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Richard Cobbe" <address@hidden>
> >
> > What's the CVSREAD variable for?
> > 
> > I know what it does, but I was (and remain) hard-pressed to come up with a
> > situation in which this behavior would be useful.  I'm assuming that such
> > situations exist; could someone provide an example?
> 
> This is typically used when you want to loosely enforce the rule
> that developers should do a cvs edit prior to actually working on
> a file.  Cvs edit makes a read-only file writable in addition to
> registering the developer to be an editor of the file.

<SNIP>

Sounds reasonable enough.  But, rather than checking out *every* file
read-only, why not use `cvs watch on'?  According to section 10.6.1 of the
Cederqvist (node `Setting a watch'), applying this command to specific
files will cause those files (and no others) to be checked out read-only,
requiring a `cvs edit' to make them read-write.

Is CVSREAD perhaps a holdover from an earlier version of CVS that didn't
support watches?

Richard