RE: How well does CVS handle other types of data?

[Sven Dowideit]

Greg,
        you are about the only person i have ever met who would argue that
non-mergable files are not source files it they are used to build something.

what gives?

i think your analogy is _very_ flawed ...

cvs is mor elike a delivery system for source objects .. the compiler might
be the hammer and screwdriver (and other tools) and so on...

sven :)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden Behalf Of
> Greg A. Woods
> Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 10:17 AM
> To: Chris Cameron
> Cc: CVS-II Discussion Mailing List
> Subject: RE: How well does CVS handle other types of data?
>
>
> [ On Friday, July 13, 2001 at 10:01:19 (+1200), Chris Cameron wrote: ]
> > Subject: RE: How well does CVS handle other types of data?
> >
> > But Greg, you say CVS is a source code management tool (really
> an ASCII text
> > file management tool, given all the caveats you add) and the
> manual excerpt
> > you quote says CVS is 'a version control system'.  A version
> control system
> > DOES NOT IMPLY source code management.
>
> In this case it clearly and absolutely does.  I quote from the
> manual again:
>
>     What is CVS?
>     ============
>
>        CVS is a version control system.  Using it, you can record the
>     history of your source files.
>                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>                     ||||||||||||
>
> Please pay special attention to the last two indicated words!
>
> Note also that CVS uses RCS files.  RCS uses diff and diff3.  All these
> things together imply that CVS only handles text files.  Q.E.D.
>
> > You keep saying to find the screwdriver instead of using the hammer, but
> > a. is it really a hammer for a screw?  It is still being used
> for version
> > control.  The users have decided the 'merge' features are not
> important, it
> > is the version control they want.
> > b. where do they find out about screwdrivers?  Are there any
> screwdrivers or
> > only your hammer plus string and glue solution?
>
> CVS is a hammer.  Source files are nails.  Non-mergable files are
> machine screws with TORX heads.  You can't effectively drive a TORX head
> machine screw with a hammer.  You can't effectively manage non-mergable
> files with CVS.
>
> Maybe your screwdriver is simply a directory naming convention on a
> network drive.  Maybe it's SSH+RCS.  Maybe it's something else entirely.
>
> You already have a build system (since of course CVS is not a build
> system).  It already deals with software configuration components that
> are not source files stored in CVS.  Adding the ability to deal with
> non-mergable files from some other source is a trivial feature to add to
> it.
>
> --
>                                                       Greg A. Woods
>
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