Re: cvs "grouping" feature

[Mark D. Baushke]

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Brouwer, Marcel <address@hidden> writes:

> Can you give me some information about the
> "commit ids" features functionality and when it
> will be released?

The NEWS file for cvs 1.12.12 has this to say
about the commitid feature:

* CVS creates a unique session id that gets written to the RCS files during
  import and commit. When committing several files at once, they all get the
  same 'commitid'. The commitid becomes visible with log and status commands,
  and is derived and compatible with the cvsnt project.
 

So, the baseline functionality exists in that the
same commitid is added to the RCS delta for all of
the files committed during a single 'cvs commit'
command and may be displayed by the 'cvs status'
and 'cvs log' commands.

There is some newly proposed functionality to make
use of the 'commitid' as a revision pseudo-tag. A
patch to the sources exists in the CVS source
repository (see http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/) on the
'newtags' branch. 

The code on the 'newtags' branch is still awaiting
additions to the sanity.sh test suite to ensure
that everything has been coded correctly. The
contributor of this code (Frank) is busy with
other matters, but has indicated that he plans to
pick up where it was left as time becomes
available.

I would like to see the 'newtags' feature released
before cvs 1.12.x is closed for new features. I am
unable to give you a timeline as to when that
might occur.

> I'm also looking for some 'functional' grouping.

The 'commitid' feature is NOT a 'functional'
grouping. It is a grouping based on the files
committed during a single invokation of the
'cvs commit' command and that is all.

If your users break commits into multiple
individual 'cvs commit' commands, then nothing in
this feature will help you.

> We are working with softwarereleases which will
> be released at a certain point in time. And it
> is not clear if al change request will be in it.
> (Some not finished jet, not passed acceptance
> test,or QC) But also to propagate some change
> requests from development to test before the
> complete release will be.

The 'commitid' feature will do nothing to aid you
in your uncertainty. I have doubts that the
'newtags' feature would do anything for you.

You may use the 'commitid' feature today with
anything that processes 'cvs log' output as a way
to know which files were associated with a given
commit. Also, the COMMITID CVS variable is
availble to you in the loginfo trigger.

        Good luck,
        -- Mark
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