Re: OT - store only the latest version of some files

[Mark D. Baushke]

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Kamaraju Kusumanchi <address@hidden> writes:

>    I am wondering if cvs has capability to do this. If not please tell
> me what the right tool is.

You probably do not want to use a source control system for this.
Just copy the results of a 'build' to a known good 'golden' directory
along with the SHA fingerprints of the files used to generate it.

>    We are using debian sid. I have a project which we need to maintain
> the source code by a version control system. The project also deals
> with some data files (around 20 or so text files each 100MB).

Data files are typically not source. So, you probably want to
investigate configuration management systems that may exist with
features that you want...

>    The data files can be substantially different between succesive
> versions. So we do not want to store the data file as diffs (as it
> consumes a lot of space). Moreover, The data files can be generated
> once you the source code is available. But generating the data files
> takes up a long time.

So, you are really talking about an optimization step to get the
generated data file out of a cache that has reasonable fingerprints on
the input files used to generate the file.

>    So the solution we came up with is "to store only the latest
> version of the data files and remove any older versions". I am
> wondering if cvs is capable of doing this namely "to store the source
> code with version control and to store only the latest version of the
> data files"?

Not really. I suppose you could use 'cvs admin -ox.y' to cause version
x.y to be deleted from the CVS repository if there were great need. It
does not sound like you have that great a need to store these files
under CVS to me.

>    We are not particular on using cvs for version control. So if there
> is other version control program capable of achieving the above, we
> will be glad to shift.

Clearcase 'winking' may be a way to accomplish this for you. However,
clearcase is a propietary SCM system that has non-trivial cost and
learning curve. I have no idea (nor any desire to find out) if clearcase
works on GNU/Linux platforms these days. I mention it only to show you
additional search terms to look at when trying to find your solution.

I think you want to do a search for configuration management software
rather than source control management software for your purposes.

        Good luck,       
        -- Mark
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