Re: Move branch tags on certain files instead of merging

[Kaz Kylheku]

On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, Andreas Otte wrote:

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> Hello!
> 
> I'm evaluating using CVS for our software development as VC-tool. 
> 
> Here is the scenario:
> 
> We have a product in constant development with intermittend
> releases. Usually a customer gets the product in a certain version
> (product release) and also gets specific changes to some files of that
> version (only 2 or 3 percent). These changes are specific for that
> customer and we want to track them.

Such changes are not really a parallel stream of development; it's
not appropriate to use CVS branches for this type of thing.  Use some
other configuration mechanism to represent these variations in a single
code stream. 

This is similar to targetting multiple platforms. If you wanted each
release of some program to run on half a dozen platforms, you wouldn't
create half a dozen branches.  Rather, you would make use of tools like
conditional compilation mechanisms built into your programming
language.

> So I'm branching for that specific customer at the relaese-point and

Ask yourself whether this is a process you want to repeat each
time you release.

>create a new working copy with cvs co -r CUSTOMER_BRANCH module. Then I
>do the specific changes for the customer on that branch and tag my real

Isn't it too late to be making changes? You have a release point,
which  means that the normal configuration of the software, as
well as the customer-specific configuration, should have been already
put through testing.