RE: Sharing Common Files

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, January 31, 2005 at 10:24:00 (-0800), Matt Doar wrote: ]
> Subject: RE: Sharing Common Files
>
> So regardless of whether you are linking to files or directories, server
> side soft links are not a good idea. A client side script to recreate
> them can be versioned.

Precisely.  This is a very important point.

> Modules are not versioned either, though I think
> there was a patch to do this a few months ago, but you can define new
> modules and still preserve the older ones.

The "modules" file has always been versioned, but one has to remember to
tag it with imporant release tags if one wishes to remember its exact
state when a given release of any module was tagged; and if one is not
very careful then one might have to revert changes in it if one wants to
create an old release that used a different module structure.

There is only one "modules" file per repository.  It must always
describe all the modules in the repo, _AND_ also all of the previous
modules that ever existed in the repo.

Making non-backwards compatible changes to the modules file is certain
suicide (w.r.t. recreating old releases) and should never EVER be done.

Trying to tie changes in module structure into ones releases is just
plain silly and counter-productive.

It's better to copy (parts of a) module(s) to new directories and start
fresh with new module names if one wants to restructure -- but leave all
the old stuff, names and everything related in the repo, exactly as it
was so that old releases using the old structure can still be used.

-- 
                                                Greg A. Woods

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