Re: CVS and lazy branching

[Eric Siegerman]

[cc'ing back to the list, for completeness]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2002 at 09:57:30AM -0700, Johnson, Susan wrote:
> It does make things a little messy when you look
> at the version tree of the file, seeing all those
> empty branches though.

Well, in another sense you *can* branch lazily, but I didn't
mention it since that seemed not to be what you were asking
about.

When you cut a major release, you're pretty sure you'll need a
bug-fix branch; so you just go ahead and make one, non-lazily.
But suppose it's a minor release.  You might well never use a
bug-fix branch, since any bug fixes will appear in the next minor
release; as you say, you'd rather not clutter up the repo with
all those unused branches, just in case.

Given that you label each release with a release tag (and if you
don't ...  well, you should start! :-) you can create bug-fix
branches lazily, i.e. create one for a given release only once
you know you need it:
    cd module
    cvs tag -b -r release-3_2_4 release-3_2_4-fixes

That roots the branch at Release 3.2.4, i.e. for each file, it
uses the revision with tag "release-3_2_4" as the branch point
for the "release-3_2_4-fixes" branch.

But as I mentioned in my last message, if you do create a bug-fix
branch for some release, whether lazily or otherwise, tag the
whole module.

> BTW, once a branch tag has been created is there any
> way of preventing somebody from deleting it (I am
> thinking in terms of release/integration branch
> tags)?

I don't think so.  You might be able to cobble something together
with CVSROOT/*info files though.

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        address@hidden
|  |  /
The acronym for "the powers that be" differs by only one letter
from that for "the pointy-haired boss".