RE: cvs add <directory>

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Saturday, May 24, 2003 at 11:50:33 (-0700), Shankar Unni wrote: ]
> Subject: RE: cvs add <directory>
>
> And the solution, in terms of CVS, may well be some compromise like
> MetaCVS, where you give up the idea of the repository structure
> mirrorring your object directory structure. Instead, your "files" are
> just synthetically named objects, and you have a meta-data file that can
> be versioned and used to recreate the actual object structure on
> checkout.

What do you think you would gain by adding all that complexity?

The only valid reason that anyone over the past decade of discussion
surrounding CVS and CVS-II, including Paul and yourself, has ever come
up with for adding even a tiny amount of the kind of complexity you're
talking about is the supposed ability to _automatically_ merge changes
between renamed files on different branches.

In reality the need to do this is, for all intents and purposes,
absolutely zero in any and all projects where CVS is best suited for use
as the version tracking tool.  I.e. it's not because CVS is limited in
this way that CVS is only useful for such projects, but rather that CVS
is useful as-is for such projects because this ability is never needed
for them.

Paul's users are complaining simply because Paul & Paul's users are
either mis-using their tools, or are at best not using the right tool,
i.e. the tool which best fulfills _all_ of their requirements.  Perhaps
they've made a tough choice, but if so then it's just too bad that they
have to suffer from the consequences of their decision -- no amount of
complaining will change anything now and their only releif will come
from changing their decision.

In reality the ability of CVS to record the generic structure of the
workspace by mirroring its structure into the repository is the very
most elegant solution for any tool which needs to do what CVS is
designed to do.

If you really want to do a lot of complex merging between lines of
development then you _REALLY_ want to use something like Bitkeeper, not
something like CVS.

> This is anyway what the other versioning systems (like ClearCase and
> Perforce) do - it'll just take some getting used to by old-time CVS
> users..

If you want all the features and foibles of ClearCase or Perforce, then
please do not even try to use CVS -- use the tool with the features you
think you want.

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

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