Re: renames under CVS

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Tuesday, February 26, 2002 at 15:10:47 (-0600), Steve Greenland wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: renames under CVS
>
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 03:29:23PM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > 
> > That would be a very good start.  However it doesn't tell us how the
> > picture would change if you'd done ideal, or even just better, planning
> > of your modules and file structure before you first checked them into
> > CVS.  I don't know how we could independently measure that part.
> 
> It's unnecessary to measure this, because it has nothing to do with the
> real world.

I beg to differ -- very strongly.

If you've got something good enough to commit to version tracking of any
kind then you'd damn well better have thought really hard about what to
name the file it's contained in, and what directory to put it in, and so
on.

Moreover if this thing makes it all the way to the first release of your
project (i.e. the first time it's tagged, after which renaming it in a
CVS repository is unwise) with a "bad" name, then all your team is
slipping up.

There really is very little excuse for a poorly named file getting into
CVS in the first place, and less for it making the first release.

In other words it is very critical to measure the difference between
files you'd like to rename now which could have been better named in the
first place vs. files which have changed in content significantly enough
that they really do deserve a new name now.

> > I know of at least one very successfull programmer who names all
> > his C source and header files with very plain and meaningless names
> > (letterNUMBER.c). He doesn't use CVS -- in fact I'm not sure he uses
> > any formal version tracking tool.
> 
> I'm sure he has no obvious need for CVS, as I am sure he has no
> collaborators.

He does have some collaborators, particularly on one larger publicly
released project he created.

> I suppose his name is Mel[1].

Nope -- his first name is Jeff, though knowing who he is and what
projects he has created are irrelevant to this discussion.

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

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