CVS questions

[Hector Santos]

Hi,

I have a few questions about CVS.

I've been using CVS for about 7-8 years now at very basic level.   My 
normal practice has been:

  1) For the current release cycle, Make changes to code,  add new 
stuff, if any

  2) Do commits, 

        cvs commit -m "comments"

  3) For final release, tag it

        cvs tag revision_tag

where an example of the revision_tag is

        rev6_3_452_6

for v6.3 build 452.6

If I see "did not move" tag warning, then I will use

    cvs tag -F revision_tag

Recently I started on "v7.0" and this will have some fundamental 
changes, includng using more current compilers (VS2008)  The end of life 
of v6.3 based on VC6 has been reached, but it will continued to be 
updated for hot fixes, if necessary.

I had explored the ideas of using branches and tags but quite frankly, 
it was very confusing so to be on the safe side, I simply cloned the 6.3 
(\CVSROOT\WC6\) repository to \CVSROOT\WC7 and checked out WC7.  So I 
did this:

- make sure we commit and tag the final v6.3

   d:
   cd \local\wc6
   cvs commit -R -m "final v6.3 commits"
   cvs tag -RF rev6_3_452_6

- backup the cvsroot\wc6 repository

   z:    
   cd \cvsroot
   pkzipc -add -dir cvsroot_rev63 wc6\*.*

- clone wc6 to wc7

   z:    
   cd \cvsroot
  xcopy wc6 wc7 /e /s

- checkout the new wc7

   d:
   cd \local
   cvs checkout -R wc7

My questions:

I had been working on WC7, making all my changes for the newer compiler, 
etc, and now I am written to commit this.

1) How should I "tag" this, what switches should I use?  do I use a Branch?

I think, technically, I can stil work on v6.3 from the WC7 and checkout 
folder repository.  Although I doubt I would want to mixed the two,  I 
am wondering if I safely could.  Ideally, I would like to single source 
it, but if there is a change of conflicts, I would rather have it 
separate.  

Which leads me to my 2nd question:

2) Is there a "enhanced" version of CVS that allows for two different 
"trunks" per se?

I did alot of reading of the subject of tagging, branching, etc, but I 
wasn't all very clear with that.  It appeared what I was looking for is 
two different "trunks"  but I wasn't sure, so this is why I did the 
separate WC6 to WC7 repository clone just to be on the safe side.

Was there something I could of done to make it do what I wanted or do I 
need to use some other CVS system?   I got the idea that one for reasons 
for SVN was that it addresses such "multi-trunk" ideas?  Is that 
correct?   I read alittle about CVSNT, but that appears to be innodated  
with "selling" your stuff.   Plus I got comfortable with manual handling 
of the cvsroot folders for situations here I need to make corrections or 
move cvs folders around , and I hate to begin hiding these stuf with  
"binary" and special formats in newer systems.

Anyway, any tips, insights or comments you made have would be appreciated.

Thanks

--
Hector Santos, CTO
http://www.santronics.com
http://santronics.blogspot.com