Re: cvswrappers - any better suggestions ?

[Alexander Kamilewicz]

"David H. Thornley" wrote:
> 
> Here's the situation I'm looking at.
> 
> We do most of our work in conventional programming languages like
> C++ and Java and Perl, and these work very well with CVS. We use
> HTML for some documentation, and that generally works well
> (although I have little experience with CVS storing the abominations
> you get when saving as HTML from Word).  We have things like
> release branches and patch branches.  What this means is that
> CVS works very well for most of the stuff we do.
> 
> On the other hand, there is stuff mixed in there that is not
> source code.  One example would be image files for the HTML.
> These files are most conveniently located in the same directory
> as the HTML files, and in some cases source files.

This is very similar to my environment, although as well as images we
have lots of .mov, .fla, .swf, .doc, .xls, & assorted binary files.

> This means that we have three choices.
> 
> 1.  Continue to use CVS, accepting the problems with binary files.
> 2.  Use a combination of CVS and some other system that handles
> binary files better.
> 3.  Switch to another tool entirely.

We do #1.  The only problem with #1 is that you're going to have a
repository that grows rather rapidly.  We realized that and invested in
a Network Appliance.  My repository is now 33Gb large.

However, since the bulk of our problems with binary files is:  "Here's a
new version of that image/movie/flash/whatever, have fun" we decided
that it would be pointless, at this point, to move to another SCM tool
when CVS fits so well into the toolkit of the developers doing the .htm,
.jsp, and .js files.

I think it's worth noting that one of the pre-eminent SCM tools for
version control/management of images/flash/movies, called MediaWay,
doesn't store "diffs" but stores a copy of every version of every
element ever entered into and/or modified in its repository.

That's basically what CVS does.  So CVS isn't particularly far away from
that functionality.

If you have a need for a tool that provides more and better information
on complex binary files (images/flashes/movies), then you can do what we
do.  Buy MediaWay, have the graphics dudes use it, and use cvs import
when they have new versions.

It works OK for us.

Alex