Re: How to document tags?

[Todd Denniston]

"Jim.Hyslop" wrote:
> 
> kj wrote:
> > Is there any good way to document (using normal, unabbreviated
> > English prose, as opposed to cryptic tag names) the meaning of
> > individual tags?
> Not directly within CVS itself. Our company's guidelines require each
> project to have a file, tags.txt, which documents the tag, when it was
> applied, who applied it, and what it's used for. As you might guess, the
> biggest problem is remembering to make the entries in the file.
> 

I do the same thing here, but getting tags.txt updated is not a problem
because all tags are applied with a script, which takes as input the
documentation as a string and traps the rest of the who/when from the
environment, the script first checks out a tree,  then puts the data in
tags.txt, commits tags.txt (with the documentation string as the comment),
tags all the files in the tree including tags.txt, and finally releases the
checkout.  This also makes it nice when doing cvs2cl, as the tag (and why
the tag was done) shows up on tags.txt when it was done, so you can see in
with the rest of the chronological ordered data when the tags were applied
(within a few seconds anyway).

This works great for tagging the head of the trunk or a branch, which has
been adequate for our needs, but if you want to tag some sandbox state it
would need to be modified to walk back to the root of the sandbox checkout
(boy some fun logic here), then do all the mods+commits+tagging.

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