RE: cvs branching... the usual questions?

[Jim.Hyslop]

Alexander von Below [mailto:address@hidden wrote:
> Sorry if these questions have been asked over and over and 
> over, but my 
> brain hurts from reading the cederquist and various tutorials, and I 
> still don't get it...
> 
> I have a version of my source with, say, a tag "VERSION1BETA". Now I 
> checked it out, modified a few files, but wanted to branch these off, 
> as version one is still not finished. So I issued `cvs tag -b 
> VERSION2DEV` and committed the files (new files were added)
> 
> First problem I ran into is that I wanted to continue to work on the 
> "VERSION1BETA" branch, but when I checked it out using -r, it 
> would not 
> let me commit.
That's because the tag VERSION1BETA is not a branch - it's a snapshot of a
specific revision.

What you want to do is to make the branch your current stream of
development, by issuing the command:

cvs up -r VERSION2DEV

Now you can modify and commit to your heart's content, and all your changes
will go onto the branch.

BTW, to help keep tags straight, we have couple of rules around branch tags.
First, you apply a non-branch tag to the point where you're branching - this
makes subsequent merges much easier to handle. Next, the name of the branch
tag is the same as the non-branch tag, with a '-bt' suffix. For example:

cvs tag VERSION2DEV
cvs tag -b -r VERSION2DEV VERSION2DEV-bt

-- 
Jim