Re: What is the average time spent installing a CVS 100% operational?

[Rob Helmer]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2002 at 02:19:55PM -0500, Eric Siegerman wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 22, 2002 at 12:41:45PM -0500, Larry Jones wrote:
> > [CVS] shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to install it from source,
> > much less if you download a binary.  Deciding how you want to configure
> > it can take a lifetime [...]
> 
> Too true!
> 
> How long it takes to set up CVS depends largely on what you want
> to use it for.  C, Fortran, anything that gets compiled and
> linked, is easy.
> 
> Java *applications* are probably not too bad either, but I've
> never really tried that.  Just give each person their own private
> compiled-classes directory, and make sure their CLASSPATH is
> right.  The challenge there is with the build system, not with
> revision control -- Java and make don't get along too well, and
> ant is a pain (IMO).

Funny, I feel the same way about make :) 

> 
> Java servlets, on the other hand, are rather harder.  The CVS
> model is that each person works on their own private copy of the
> system, resynchronizing periodically with what the rest of the
> team is doing.  In a C environment, you edit your copy of the
> sources, build, and test your own executable.  To get the same
> effect in a servlet environment, each person has to have their
> own private servlet engine (with their private classes directory
> in its CLASSPATH), which in turn means their own web server.
> (More accurately, each CVS working directory, if it is to be used
> for testing, needs its own servlet engine and web server).

Where I work, everyone has a port number designated to them by
the global login rc, and their webserver/servlet engine combo
is mostly made up from symlinks.

We use csh aliases for build system commands, these aliases call shell
scripts that actually invoke Ant. These shell scripts are
checked into CVS.

It's quite nice actually, you can simply do a CVS checkout, run
the create_webserver.sh ( does the symlinking for you ) and
start running build commands, and there are aliases that let 
you start and stop your server. 

It is all checked into CVS, and run from individual sandboxes
while not being hard to use ( all build/start/stop commands 
are simple two-letter abbreviations ) and it stays out of
the developer's way.



HTH,
Rob Helmer