Re: How to find the parent of any random branch

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Friday, August 24, 2001 at 09:47:00 (-0700), address@hidden wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: How to find the parent of any random branch
>
> The "Sticky Tag" tells me the branch name - I'm looking
> for the parent of the branch.

Ah, I think you mean the "base" of the branch!

This was once upon a time an FAQ, but I just went looking in the manual
and didn't find the most often given answer, or even any hidden bit of
advice that would suggest the answer!

That answer usually went somewhat along the lines of "You should always
first tag your module with with an ordinary non-branch tag and then use
that as the basis for creating your branch."  I usually also advise
never creating a branch tag with "cvs tag" but rather always using "cvs
rtag" since that forces you to have a base tag to work from (or a well
known cut-off date, etc., though I hate using dates too).  I've even
gone so far as to remove support for '-b' in "cvs tag" at some sites.

The reason is of course that as you've discovered it can be difficult to
figure out the base revision for every file for any given branch tag.
The reasons for finding that base revision are of course many and varied.

What people usually end up doing is inventing a naming scheme to help
separately identify the branch tags and their base tags.  I've seen two
major variants of such a naming convention in use over time.  One is to
use the word "base" in the base tag name, and the other is to use the
word "branch", or the abbreviation "br" in the branch tag name.  (some
people use both too, especially if they use tags for lots of other
purposes too)

This advice really should appear in some form in the "Creating a branch"
node in the manual!

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

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