Re: Attic headaches.

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Friday, August 24, 2001 at 08:04:15 (GMT), Kaz Kylheku wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Attic headaches.
>
> Nope; no history was ever lost. It's called ``copy on write''. You simply
> have two (or more) files in separate places that happen to share the
> same representation. And then one day they no longer do that. But
> their histories, up to that point, are identical and remain that way.

I'm not talking about the deltas committed to files -- I'm talking about
all the other meta information that you've lost.

File death and resurrection is (an admittedly lame, but it's all we've
got) way to track at least some of the meta information inherent in the
position of managed files within the directory hierarchy.

The reason I said you MIGHT be able to get away with symlinks to other
directories is that this would not have changed the way CVS manages file
death and resurrection.  With symlinks between directories you're
effectively only creating aliases in the hierarchy in the same way you
could do so with the features available in the modules file.  The
success of this hack depends on its long term use and survival though
and so such tricks must be very very carefully planned.

> But I'm not in any ``situation''!  I had a bunch of symlinks, most
> of which are gone.

Yes, but you've lost meta information in your repository -- information
you may not care about now, but which someone may care about someday!

> Look, you try incrementally migrating a whole bunch of people and code
> from a braindamaged version control system to CVS, where you have files
> linked together under the old system, and you want to keep up with
> bugfix patches from there for a while, at the same time as cleaning it
> up to do it right under CVS.

Been there, done that, without symlinks.  Yes the developers feel they
are being beaten to a pulp and not able to do their work, but in the end
they thank you.

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <address@hidden>     <address@hidden>
Planix, Inc. <address@hidden>;   Secrets of the Weird <address@hidden>