Re: renaming a directory in the checkout / recursive add and commit for all subdirs

[Paul Sander]

>--- Forwarded mail from Greg Woods:

>[ On Wednesday, September 19, 2001 at 18:39:19 (+0200), Alexander Welti wrote: 
>]
>> Subject: Re: renaming a directory in the checkout / recursive add and commit 
>> for all subdirs
>>
>> i received a really cool trick for my problem:
>> go to the repository directly (have a backup copy)
>> rename the desired directory;
>> do a fresh checkout and everything works fine;

>That "stupid hack" will destroy any possibility of retrieving past revisions.

>It will also disrupt current working directories somewhat.

>The correct procedure (as documented in the manual) is to:

>       1. create the new directory
>       2. move all the files from the old directory to the new one
>       3. "cvs rm *" in the old directory
>       4. "cvs add newdir"
>       5. "cd newdir; cvs add *"
>       6. "cvs commit" at the root of the working directory and give a
>          commit message that identifies exactly what you've done.

'Course, this procedure makes it harder to gather the entire
version history of any file together into one place (you need to
check out a new sandbox for every reorg to see it all), and
it's harder to merge between branches if the contributor branch
didn't have this procedure done at the same time as the destination
branch.

Another way to handle some of these cases is replicate the RCS
files in the repository (and delete version tags), but that method
has its own problems.

Still another way is to write a new module and hack in the new
location of the renamed directories.  That solves the problems
of both methods above, but adds its own set.  For example, all
users of the new module must perform a fresh checkout, plus you
must track multiple modules for a single product.

It's up to you to decide which set of problems you'd rather live
with.  See the manual for still more on the topic.

>--- End of forwarded message from address@hidden