importing vendor branches

[Fergus Henderson]

I recently did a `cvs import' to update the version of a third-party
package that we use in our product.

Unfortunately, this import immediately broke our repository;
the automated cron tests started failing, developers on the
other side of the planet complained because they couldn't build
from CVS, etc.

Once I'd merged in the changes, and committed the merge, everything was
OK again, but it really sucks that CVS breaks things in the mean time.
Is there any way to avoid this?


The original import was done with a command such as

        cvs import gc gc_4_1

and the subsequent update that I did recently was done with

        cvs import gc gc_6_0alph6

The reason that this broke things is that `cvs checkout'
was checking out inconsistent versions of different files.
After the import, some files -- those which we had not modified -- now
had revision 1.1.2 on the vendor branch, and only 1.1 on the main branch,
and `cvs update -A' retrieved revision 1.1.2, i.e. the vendor branch.
But for other files, their version on the main branch was 1.2, and on
the branch it was 1.1.2', and `cvs update -A' retrieved revision 1.2,
i.e. the main branch.  So `cvs update -A' was checking out some files
from the main branch (based on gc_4_1 with our modifications)
and some from the vendor branch (gc_6_0_alpha6).
Trying to mix incompatible versions naturally broke things.

Is this a bug in CVS?

-- 
Fergus Henderson <address@hidden>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
                                    |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.