Re: pvcs to cvs and magic branches

[Greg A. address@hidden (Greg A. Woods)]

[ On Thursday, July 12, 2001 at 13:31:01 (-0400), Eric Siegerman wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: pvcs to cvs and magic branches
>
> It's CVS, not RCS, that wants branch numbers to be even.  I'm not
> sure why.  (Exception: the vendor branch is 1.1.1 by default.)

The "magic" in CVS branch numbers is that they do not ever point to real
revisions.  I.e. they are "magic" in the sense that they are virtual and
indicate that a tag is a branch tag and they point to where a branch
revision will be created when, and if, a delta to that file on that
branch is created; and they point to the branch from the top revision
will be extracted when CVS deals with operations on a sticky branch.

CVS magic branch numbers facilitate "lazy branching" in CVS and thus
make CVS often far more efficient at branching than RCS (or SCCS) alone.

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

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