RE: cvs tags

[Arthur Barrett]

Hi J.V.

> > Also I have no clue as to any file in the repo at the 
> > moment and no idea what path may exist.

cvs rls


> You seem to be thinking backwards of the way CVS works:  In CVS, tags
> identify branches and revisions within a file.  That is, files contain
> tags, tags don't contain files.  

Whilst technically true, I think this is not necessarily a helpful point
to make.  Eg: SVN 'shows' files within tags, but CVS 'shows' tags within
files, but CVSNT 3.x (EVSCM) can serve both SVN and CVS clients - it
simply shows tags within files to CVS and files within tags to SVN - the
concepts are interchangable.

I personally think a lot of the success of SVN is that 'showing' files
within tags is more intuitive - but why some GUI designer didn't simply
display CVS tags like this years ago I've no idea - changing the server
is not necessary (but it makes it incredibly easier - which could be an
argument that GUI designers were lazy both with CVS and SVN by simply
displaying to users the server's view and not thinking about the human
computer interface that GUI's are really all about).

OK back to the question.

To find the tags/branches in a repository use:

  cvs co -p CVSROOT/val-tags

Except it's not reliable, and may not be 'turned on'.

So to get the tags/branches in a repository using a CVS 1.x client use:

  cvs rls 
  cvs rls path/to/any/file
  cvs rlog -h path/to/any/file

Except that any one file can have different tags/branches to any other
file... But whilst technically true - in practice people tend to
tag/branch the entire repo (or at least the modules/top level
directory).  For this reason Eclipse checks in a file to the root of
each 'project' which it then uses to display the tags/branches for the
whole project (even through in theory each file in the project could
have different tags/branches it's a) silly b) uncommon).

Regards,


Arthur Barrett