Re: Do most people checkout read-only and use "cvs edit"?

[Izo]

Karr, David wrote:
> I'm not talking about locking.  It's always impractical to "check out
> with locks", in any SCM.  I'm just talking about what happens in the
> user's client view.  I was under the impression before that "cvs edit"
> just affects the file in the user's client view.  Does this also lock
> the file on the server?

cvs edit is purely informational and does few things:

1. makes the file writeable which helps in case if you have CVSREAD=yes, 
so all files co'd read-only
2. creates local copy of the original file into Base subdirectory on 
local file
3. creates an information in the CVS repository (I do not know where, 
maybe only in CVSROOT/history file) which helps other users to get this 
information, let say for coordination purposes

Reverse for cvs edit is cvs unedit, which should be called at least once 
for every cvs edit command. Otherwise we sooner or later get the mess 
and this information gets unuseful.

So the correct purpose and procedure of using cvs edit would be:

1. cvs editors <file_or_directory_in_question>
2. communicate with other editors in a way of "what is going on" and 
decide in a way "does it and how does this all affect my intentions"
3. cvs edit or back-off (and wait for better time)
4. if cvs edit:
4.1. do the job
4.2. cvs update <file_or_directory_in_question> to get the changes that 
the other editors did on the object
4.3. resolve eventual conflicts
4.4. cvs ci
4.5. cvs unedit <file_or_directory_in_question>

Izo