Setting up first repository

[Roddie]

I'm new to CVS, and I've been reading up about it for some weeks. I'm about
to set up a repository, and in the absence of colleagues to discuss things
with face to face I'm really looking for reassurance that what I intend to
do is OK.

I'm a one-man website developer. As things have turned out, I do relatively
complex on-going work on a small number of sites. Development is on my OS X
Mac laptop, and deployment is on my own RH Linux co-lo.

The repository could be on either computer, but I plan to put it on the
co-lo. This is more secure than the laptop, gives me access from anywhere,
and if work continues to grow I will need to provide access for another
programmer.

The directory structure is

/some/path/www/sites/site_1/
/some/path/www/sites/site_2/
/some/path/www/sites/site_3/
...
/some/path/www/sites/site_n/
/some/path/www/sites/shared/

The shared directory holds libraries and other files needed by all the other
sites. Each site uses symlinks so that the shared files appear to be in the
correct place for that site. As I understand it, the symlinks should not be
part of the repository, but created manually. Sandbox checkout will be a
very infrequently event so creating the symlinks won't be a big deal (though
I'll probably script it). I assume commit and update won't affect the
symlinks.

I plan to have the sites directory as the project. There would be three
sandboxes to start with: a development sandbox on the Mac laptop; a test
sandbox on the co-lo (to iron out any Mac<>Linux issues); and the live sites
in a sandbox on the co-lo.

Normally, development will take place on the Mac, be committed, the test
sandbox updated, tested and committed, and then the live site sandbox (and
the Mac if necessary) updated.

Occasionally I make changes direct to the live site. These are usually
trivial updates of content, but remembering to make them also in the
development files is a nuisance. In this instance I would make changes to
the live site, commit them, and then update the development sandbox.

Is all this correct, complete and sensible? I'm open to any advice.

Thanks

Roddie Grant
address@hidden