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Re: cvs add <directory>


From: Greg A. Woods
Subject: Re: cvs add <directory>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 16:50:20 -0400 (EDT)

[ On Friday, May 23, 2003 at 08:51:06 (-0400), Phil R Lawrence wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: cvs add <directory>
>
> Hold on there!  We were unable to use CVS because it could not version 
> our directories...  I consider it a major deficiency.

What, exactly, do you think directories are, anyway?  What is a
"version" of a directory?  You can get yourself into a very nasty
endless loop as soon as you try to think about versioning directories
instead of just versioning your content.  With CVS there is no need to
version directories -- they come and go as needed to contain the files
which contain your content.

> We never did find a tool that could do this, and settled on just RCS'ing 
> individual files.  But that really sucks.  I had hoped i could check out 
> a complete, functioning tree (links and all, dir structure as of a 
> certain release, etc.) on a test machine for practicing vendor upgrade 
> scripts.  It would have been sweet.

CVS cannot be used very successfully that way.  It is intended that CVS
always be used with some form of build system.  If you want to create
symbolic links, empty directories, etc., in your "production" directory
tree then you need to write a program of some sort (script, makefile,
whatever) that'll build your production directory tree from the source
files (which will include the source for your build program).

Once you wrap your head around the idea of using "source code" to create
the objects which populate your production environment then you'll be
able to successfully use CVS no matter what "language" you write your
code in, provided the stored form of that code is ammenable to being
manipulated and compared with text-based tools such as RCS, diff, etc.

CVS doesn't come with its own build system -- it is expected you will
provide your own, one that's most suited for your purposes (i.e. it is
expected that you'll used the best tool for the job, and there are an
infinite number of such build tools to choose from, most of which have
not even been thought of yet).

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

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




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