Re: Update keeps breaking my commits in WinCVS.

[Kaz Kylheku]

In article <address@hidden>, Nicholas wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>I've got a repository locally on my Win2K box. If I modify a file then
>go into WinCVS I can commit it, without checking it in (is this as it
>should be?)
>
>The file then disappears from WinCVS (leaving me no way to check it
>out again, yet I can just start editing it in a third party
>application).

You have probably clicked one of those little red buttons in one of the
toolbars which have appeared in recent versions of WinCVS, for filtering
the browsed files for various criteria.  You can have WinCVS show you
only those files which require a commit; if you then commit those files,
they disappear from view because they no longer match the filter.

>When I update the file in, the update works fine. Yet if i try to
>commit the updated file the commit fails. Is this right? Should I just
>be committing these files without updating them?

If you edit a file based on some version N,  and in the meanwhile
someone (possibly you, from another working copy) commits a 
new version N + 1, then your working copy is out of date. You cannot
commit until you perform an update operation, and resolve any conflicts.

>And why do the committed files disappear from WinCVS's file viewer?

See above.

>P.S. how does checking-in correspond to 'update' and 'commit'.

Commit and check-in are exactly the same thing. CVS doesn't use the
``check-in'' terminology, though the abbreviation ``ci'' is retained
from RCS. Commit means to record your local changes into the repository,
giving rise to a new version.

Update means to get the latest material from the repository, and
incorporate it into your working copy. If your working copy is locally
modified, the new changes from the repository are merged, which 
can create conflicts that must be resolved. 

By the way, you should do commits on an entire module, not on individual
files. WinCVS makes it easy to select some files and commit them
individually, but this is often the wrong thing to do.  Applying a
commit to the entire module will cause CVS to perform a global up-to-date
check. If any files have changed, not jus tthe ones you are working on,
the check will fail and you will have to update.

If you commit individual files, you run the risk of commiting a change
which breaks with respect to someone else's concurrent change to
another file.