RE: DIfferent workspace directories than repository...

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Wednesday, January 30, 2002 at 17:08:47 (EST), address@hidden wrote: ]
> Subject: RE: DIfferent workspace directories than repository...
>
> I agree.  That's why I asked the question.  I was unclear as to the
> limitations and capabilities of CVS.

CVS manages changes to the contents of text files.  It uses RCS as a
back-end to store these changes and logs of descriptive messages and
other such audit trail information for each recorded change to a file.

It's only unique features over and above RCS alone is that it can
process changes to files in a whole hierarchy at once (though in fact it
does it directory-by-directory, not really all at once), whereas RCS
alone essentially only works on one file at a time.

CVS does branching and revision number management somewhat differently
from RCS alone too.

Since CVS uses the "copy-edit-merge" form of change tracking instead of
using the "lock-edit-commit" form it relies even more on the
compatability of the file contents and the types of changes usually made
to files with the algorithms implemented by GNU diffutils (and in
particular the diff3 program).  I.e. CVS work best only on text files,
and only if sweeping changes (eg. paragraph re-formatting, mass changes
in whitespace and/or indentation, etc.) are _not_ done.

That's it though.  That's pretty much all CVS does.  Oh, it's got the
basic features necessary for supporting the kinds of release management
processes used when managing computer program source code (cvs tag), but
that's as far as it goes.

> I did.  Several times.  And I didn't see reference to what I am
> talking about.  Lack of features are rarely documented in any kind of
> manual.  Which is why I asked.  Before, I assumed that CVS didn't have
> this feature, but I wanted to make sure by asking those most
> knowledgeable about it.

I would have thoght the section "What is CVS not?" in the manual would
quite clearly have answered your questions.  If not perhaps you can
suggest some improvements after you've learned more and you can remember
why the manual was insufficient at explaining the limitations to you.

> Although, the feature I'm asking I don't think is a "full SCM" tool
> feature.  Because there are other SCM tools with comparable features
> to CVS that support what I'm talking about.  But they don't have all
> of the bells and whistles of expensive full-blown SCM tools.

Oh, I think most of the Software Configuration Management community
would most certainly believe you were looking for a full SCM tool -- and
all of those familiar with CVS would absolutely agree that CVS was not
what you were looking for, regardless of how anyone would describe a
"full SCM tool".

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

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