Re: Multilevel vendor branch import

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Thursday, October 30, 2003 at 15:46:45 (-0200), Rodolfo Schulz de Lima 
wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Multilevel vendor branch import
>
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 02:37:21PM -0500, Ross Patterson wrote:
> > But the good news is that it doesn't look like what you're trying to do is 
> > all that hard with normal CVS.  Instead of trying to "cvs import" each 
> > release, try just checking the updated code in to CVS.  Tag it where tags 
> > make sense, branch it where branches make sense, etc.
> 
> I've already considered doing this, but I'll loose the original
> timestamp information of each file. Since there are some 'historical'
> versions of linux, it's cool to keep the date each file was last
> modified by its authors. Only import can do this (import -d).

I'd say that's a pretty lame excuse for wanting to use the wrong tool
for the job!  ;-)

Note that you cannot really, and do not even want to try, to preserve
the last modified times of the files.  You absolutely do NOT want to try
to do that.  Trust me.  :-)

Besides, you don't have the revision history of those files -- you only
have the source release product files.  If you really wanted to preserve
all the history in a local repository then you'd be rsync'ing the
original repository (not sur you can do that with the linux kernel), or
you'd be using bitkeeper.  :-)

However what you may want to do is to make the commits appear to have
been done at the time the release was made.

If you really want to do it "right" then I'd suggest putting all the
relevant files and archives on a stand-alone (non-networked) dedicated
system that you can set the date on as you progress through checking in
the releases.

Alternately you could just write a small program that mucks with the
dates in the RCS files after each commit so that they match the
timestamp of the release....

-- 
                                                Greg A. Woods

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