Re: Request for comments on 'Extending CVS withoffline/disconnected operations'

[Derek Robert Price]

Sorry for the delayed response.  I've been busy.

Tamas Nagy wrote:

> Please have a look at and comment the following proposal at
> http://mypage.bluewin.ch/kde3-debian/cvs-delta/cvs-offline.txt ... 
>
> 1.) What's your opinion about the proposed operations/syntax?

This is an interesting approach.  I've thought for awhile that CVS 
should be extended to allow many operations to happen offline when 
necessary.  After all, laptops are still much more common than wireless 
internet access.  Especially add/remove and diff against the base 
revision.  All that should be necessary for diff would be storing the 
base revision in CVS/Base like `cvs edit' already does and then some 
special casing.

> 2.) Do you believe CVS could be naturally extended this way, or should
> be dropped in favor of other versioning tool?

Like I said, I've been keeping some of this in the back of my mind for 
some time but have never found the time to implement it.

> 3.) Could any popular CVS client-app could be easily extended to support
> these 'offline operations'?

Diff & add/remove could for sure.  `cvs up -C' too, using the Base 
revision as I mentioned for diff.  I'm not sure why you bother with the 
merge operation.  If `cvs diff' works, you should just be able to run 
the result through patch.

> 4.) Do you see any conceptual problem with the proposed operations?

Nope.  Not as I understand them.

> 5.) Would you consider to use/implement offline operations or an
> e-mail-based cvs transport protocol in a CVS client app?

I think I would write a wrapper script around CVS calls for any 
email-based transport.  The rest of it I'd like to see implemented, but 
I don't have time right now to do it myself.  If anyone submitted fairly 
complete patches, I'd be happy to review and maybe commit them.

> 6.) ...
>
> Thanks and really appreciate your time and opinion in advance, Tamas
> Nagy
>  

Hope that was useful.  Please send further direct inquiries to the 
<bug-cvs@gnu.org> mailing list and not directly to me unless I've 
already joined the discussion.  If I've joined the discussion, feel free 
to continue cc'ing me.

Derek

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