multiple developers sharing one working directory

[Judy Pearson]

Unix cvs server (cvs 1.11.1p1) with the pserver access method
Unix (cvs 1.11.1p1) and WinCVS 1.2 clients.


Our shop is in the process of moving from VSS to cvs (yay!). I have a set of 
Java/jsp programmers who share development in one
working directory. (They will not be convinced that sharing a directory isn't a 
good idea.)

In VSS, these developers are able to lock/edit individual files in the shared 
directory and have their names associated with the
edit/commit/etc.

In cvs, the CVS/Root file is blocking a similar type of programmer/file access. 
The name of whoever checked out the module is saved
in CVS/Root and used for subsequent cvs operations on the directory. I have 
seen that removing the Root file causes the $CVSROOT
environment variable to be used. If there are no negative side-effects of 
removing CVS/Root from these common work areas, it would
allow the developers to distinguish themselves in their file access. (I know 
we'd have some annoying write permissions problems to
get around, but that's not a big concern to the developers.)

Assuming $CVSROOT is set properly, what is the effect of removing the CVS/Root 
file from a working directory?

I do not anticipate any of these development efforts using two different 
repositories, so we would not face the bother of needing to
have the CVSROOT change from one directory to another.

I haven't seen any negative effects of this in my testing, but I also have not 
been successful at finding information on this in web
searches. I looked through the source code and it looks like this should work 
fine. There is actually a comment in root.c stating
that
     * It is possible that not all repositories will have a CVS/Root
     * file. This is ok, but the user will need to specify -d
     * /path/name or have the environment variable CVSROOT set in
     * order to continue.  */


Of course, any recommendations of other ways to address this issue are welcome.

Thanks in advance for your time.

- Judy