Re: newbie usage question

[Max Bowsher]

Terrence Enger wrote:
> Greetings.
>
> I am hacking around on the code from an open-source project.  Okay, I'll
> admit it, that project is cvs itself.  Some experimentation makes me think
> that I *may* eventually have something to offer back to the official
> source.  How can I best prepare for that eventuality?
>
> It will be--at best--a long time before I have anything significant to
> contribute, so I suspect that a branch within the official source is not
> justified.  OTOH, I am smothered in paper (with lots of markings in
> different colours, whereby I track my changes), and besides that I need
> experience *using* cvs.
>
> So far as I can see, the obvious scheme is to set up my own repository,
> where I can record my own work, and to treat the official source as vendor
> distributions.  However, this provides no assistance for contributing
> patches back to the official source. That is to say, I would checkout
> official source into a separate work area, apply my changes, submit a
> patch, and eventually deal with the conflicts when I update my
> work-in-progress from the the official source.  Well, now that I wrote it
> down in so many words, it does not look like such a big deal.  Still, I
> would welcome better suggestions or confirmation that this is a reasonable
> way to proceed.

Why not:

Make a script that regularly cvs updates an unmodified working dir from
cvshome, and if there were changes, imports it into your local repository,
and mails you a reminder to merge from the vendor branch. (Make sure you
make good use of tags so you can always merge the right changes without
fuss.)

Then, simply:

cvs rdiff -r VENDORBRANCH -r HEAD
(or just cvs diff -r VENDORBRANCH in your changed working dir)

CVS will take care of day-to-day merging, requiring user assistance only for
conflicts - which won't happen very often.

> On a related topic ... I tried some time ago to register for e-mail
> notification of commits to the official repository, and I was never
> successful:  The web page told me that my request was accepted, but I
never
> received notification, not once!  Again, I welcome your suggestions.

I had this problem too. Try registering a user on the cvshome.org website,
and logging in and joining via the forms which will then appear on the
mailing list page, rather than sending email to
address@hidden .

Max.