Re: CVS for DOS?

[Todd Denniston]

Spiro Trikaliotis wrote:
> 
> Hello Arno,
> 
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 11:26:37PM +0100, Arno Schuring wrote:
> 
<SNIP>
> > but you would still be stuck at the connectivity level - DOS has no
> > native networking support.
> 
> Yes, I know. That's the reason I mentioned ssh in the original post.
> 
> > There is no real risk in mixing DOS and windows environments
> > (especially up to w98), since they share a common base (filesystem,
> > line endings).
> 
> Well, I know, as I have used it that way before.
> 
> In fact, the DOS project started using a RCS implementation for DOS.  As
> the project has all files in one directory, this is not that bad.
> 
> As I wanted to have all sources on a central server, which is backed up
> regularly, I moved all RCS files into a central CVS repository. Although
> I can share the sandbox between Windows and DOS, there are many "manual"
> steps involved, which are error prone:
> 
> 1. Check out a sandbox on Windows, put it into a Windows share
> 2. Copy the files from the Windows share to DOS (via network)
> 3. Work on the files
> 
> If I want to check in, I have to do:
> 
> 4. Copy the files back to the Windows share
> 5. commit
> 6. perform steps 2 und 3 from above
> 
> Although it might be possible to checkout directly into a share from
> DOS, I do not like that idea. I do not trust the Windows TCP/IP stack
> that much, as it is rather old.
<SNIP>

sneakernet.

I have used to great effect an Iomega Zip disk. 
1. Check out a sandbox on system with CVS and a Zip drive, directly on the ZIP
drive.
2. move ZIP disk to computer where compiler is.
3. Work on the files
4. move ZIP disk back to machine in step 1
5. commit
6. perform step 2 & 3 from above
Same number of steps, but a little less likely to miss things.

You only have to trust the tcp stack on the system you do the checkout on, or
in my case I did the checkout physically at the CVS server machine running
linux to a vfat formatted ZIP.
You don't have to trust that you copied everything because it is all on the
disk, and unless the disk fails you get all or none of it.
In my case, the compiler machine had a ZIP drive but I was not allowed to
install (in any way) any form of CVS executable on it, so this was the easiest
method of keeping the sources controlled.
 
Minor notes, if using this method with a linux machine:
1) mount the ZIP disk with the conv=text option,
2) the first checkout should be done to a case sensitive&preserving filesystem
and then `zip /tmp/movemod.zip cvsmodule ; cd /mnt/zip; unzip
/tmp/movemod.zip`, if you don't the linux vfat driver will make your file &
directory names all lower case and cause you grief later. But after the
initial checkout is on the disk with correct capitalization, commit, update
and all the other cvs commands seem to work fine. (cvs adding a new directory
might mess up the new CVS directory capitalization )

-- 
Todd Denniston
Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC Crane) 
Harnessing the Power of Technology for the Warfighter