Re: newbie usage question

[Terrence Enger]

At 17:33 2003-04-27 +0100, you wrote:
>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.)

Ah yes.  <musing>I make my living writing programs for other people.  Why
should I hesitate to write a script for myself?</musing>

>
>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.

And then feed the output into patch?  Would it be okay to do the following
immediately?: 
    cvs update -j officialrelease1 -j officalrelease2 

>
>> 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 .

Have tried this, and it seemed to work.  Waiting now for a commit e-mail.

>
>Max.


Thank you, Max, for your help.  Time for me now to do a backup and start
trying this.

Terry.