Re: CVS questions

[Sergei Organov]

Spiro Trikaliotis <address@hidden> writes:
> Hello Segei,
>
> * On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 03:36:48PM +0300 Sergei Organov wrote:
>> "Bulgrien, Kevin" <address@hidden> writes:
>  
>> No, almost any recent tool handles branching and merging better than
>> CVS. Even CVSNT and SVN are better,
>
> Oh, SVN is better? Yes, obviously...

Well, I said "even" as I don't actually think they are in fact so much
better ;-)

>
> Did you ever check out only a subdirectory of a project?

No, never, sorry. And if we will base our ratings on partial checkouts,
then probably CVS is "better" than almost anything else as, say, DVCS'es
usually even don't support partial checkouts.

And partial checkouts in CVS are painful too, as usually I do want new
subdirectories to appear in my working copy, but giving -d switch will
bring all the intentionally omitted directories back.

> Then, on merge, you must remember to give the complete path to that
> subdirectory in the merge command (that is, for the URL, it does not
> suffice to give the branch name; after the branch name, you also have
> to given the directory you are in). If you fail to do so, your sandbox
> is completely broken. It cannot be repaired, you have to check it out
> again and start over. I really hope for you that you did not have any
> not yet committed changes in the sandbox...
>
> Thus, a line like
>
> svn merge https://svnserver.some.where/project/tags/v1.2/some/sub/dir/ 
> https://svnserver.some.where/project/tags/v1.2.1/some/sub/dir .
>
> is so much more natural and cleaner than doing
>
> cvs up -j v1_2 -j v_1_2_1
>
> Of course, obviously, that's what I would call it, too.

The problem with CVS is with repeated merges, -- too many manual
bookkeeping. And yes, I regularly do merges in CVS so I do know what
pain it is, even with some additional automation.

-- Sergei.