RE: multiple developers sharing one working directory

[Judy Pearson]

Thanks for the clarification re Unix logins. I'll look into the whole thing 
with the help of our sys admin.

Here are your questions answered:

> 1. Why did the group move from VSS to CVS?

The group has been wanting to move from VSS for quite awhile. I can think of:

- We're a Unix shop and want reliable, smoothly-automated regular (nightly or 
more often) and easily configurable builds on our Unix
boxes. Couldn't see a nice way of arriving there using Windows VSS. We looked 
into Unix VSS for a short time (bad idea: buggy and
unsupported).
- Doggy off-site access (I don't have the details - I only know it was tooooo 
slow).
- There were various other complaints about VSS behavior. It was a pain to 
override working folders set below the current project
level. There were timing problems with transferring files from the Windows side 
to Unix via Samba resulting in end sections of files
getting dumped. People wanted Unix command-line access to the repository. I 
don't remember the rest.

We're moving to CVS primarily because we want something mainstream and 
Unix-based that is not very expensive.


> 2. Why does the group not like CVS?
>
The group as a whole is quite mixed in their attitudes about CVS. A number of 
people are quite relieved to be moving to a standard,
Unix-based repository system. For most, switching from the repository-based VSS 
to the workspace-based CVS is a mind-bender. Some of
the developers have only used VSS and they've used it for over 3 years. While 
they were annoyed with VSS, they expect standard
Windows apps behavior and don't think they're getting it from WinCVS. Two of 
the people in the small group that is doing this jsp
work are very Windows-centric and, I think, don't like anything that smells of 
Unix. Unfortunately, these are the first people to be
jumping in with both feet.

Another thing that muddies it all: After a lot of wrangling, our boss decided 
we would use CVS with locking (I offered to wrestle
him over it, but he just pulled rank on me). We're using our own tcl macros in 
WinCVS to do locking and editing - and the reverse -
in one-step processes. I am sure some of the confusion people are having stems 
from the square peg, round hole problems associated
with using locking in cvs. In addition, there were other GUIs that I think 
would have been better accepted than WinCVS, but got
ruled out a priori because they didn't support locking and didn't have decent 
macro tie-ins to compensate.

Maybe that's more than you wanted to know.

- Judy
>