Re: CVS sticky information ignored on import

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On , April 8, 2002 at 09:13:01 (-0700), Hamish Allan wrote: ]
> Subject: CVS sticky information ignored on import
>
> It seems to me that if a file is marked as binary or tagged in
> CVS/Entries in a sandbox, e.g.:
> 
> /noodle.jpeg/1.1/Mon Apr 8 16:39:14 2002/-kb/TNOODLE_FINAL
> 
> when 'cvs import'ed to a new repository, the resulting version should
> be tagged and registered as binary, so that when you 'cvs checkout' it
> again the resulting sandbox has the same binary/tag information.

'cvs import' does not "work" from within a working directory (aka
sandbox) -- i.e. it does not do anything special.

Or rather it only works by virtue of the fact that by default it'll
ignore all the administrative "CVS" sub-directories and the files they
contain.

Unless you're managing third-party sources you shouldn't use "cvs import".

If you're managing third-party sources that have been checked out from a
public CVS repository then you probably want to check them out from your
own local repository using 'cvs checkout -P -ko' (and 'cvs update -d -P
-ko' too of course).  On unix-ish platforms this will preserve even
binary files transparently (since there is no such thing as a "text"
file per se on Unix -- they're all 8-bit binary transparent) and all you
have to do is avoid keyword expansion, which you probably want to avoid
anyway if you're manaing third-party source code from a third party CVS
repository and thus which may already contain its own RCS keywords that
you do not want to disturb!

However if you're managing third-party binary files and checking them
out on non-unix-ish platforms then you will have to individually ensure
that the '-kb' flag is set in the RCS files in your own repository for
every binary file (but not for text files if you want proper text
handling to work!).

If you're doing the latter a lot then you might be better off using
something other than CVS.

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

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