RE: confused over tags

[Jim.Hyslop]

Mike wrote:
> I'm very confused over tags and sticky tags. I have several
> projects at work where there is are dev, test, and prod
> environments. What I wanted to do, and this is probably where
> I'm very confused, is to have a prod tag and a test tag. The
> dev environment would be the default with no tag.
> 
> I expected the developers to work on their stuff and when
> it's ready for testing (QA) an admin would put a TEST tag
> on the files. The same for production and a PROD tag. In
> production there would be a weekly update from CVS of those
> files with the PROD tag.
Don't be shy with tags. Instead of (or in addition to) using just TEST and
PROD, make sure you have tags that indicate a specific snapshot, and that do
not move. You can still use TEST and PROD, but your usage then becomes:

cvs rtag [module] non_moving_tag
cvs rtag -F -r non_moving_tag [module] TEST

> When I tried a 'cvs update -t PROD' in one of the directories
> it removed those things not yet in cvs from the directory,
> leaving the one file that had a PROD tag, but also set a
> stick tag to PROD so that I couldn't checkout new updates.
Hmmm... CVS never deletes files it does not know about (except when you use
the 'cvs release -d' command). I've never seen it do that on an update.

Can you reproduce that behaviour consistently? If so, please post the exact
sequence of commands you used, along with the versions of your CVS client
and server software (cvs --version)

Also, the -t option is not part of CVS (not the stable 1.11 branch, at
least) - which version are you using (or was that a typo for -r?).

> Where can I read more about this, or some series of commands,
> so I can understand what's going on?
The manual has a section discussing branch usage.


-- 
Jim Hyslop
Senior Software Designer
Leitch Technology International Inc. ( http://www.leitch.com )
Columnist, C/C++ Users Journal ( http://www.cuj.com/experts )