RE: s the cvs status always shows tags in ordered?

[Arthur Barrett]

Hez,

>        E (revision: 1.1.1.1)
>        D (revision: 1.1.1.1)
>        C (branch: 1.1.1.1.6)
>        B (revision: 1.1.1.1)
>        A (revision: 1.1.1.1)
>
>
> Is the order of the tags guaranteed? 

It is not in the spec - so it is implementation specific, so different
flavours/versions of CVS/DCVS/OpenCVS/CVSNT may do different things.

> 
> That is the latest created tag will be displayed 
> on top, and the oldest one displayed at the bottom?

Generally as a rule I think the servers will send the results in the
order that they were added to the RCS file, which IS NOT the same as the
oldest to newest since a tag can be "moved" so its revision will change
but not its order in the RCS file.

> I'm trying to automate a process where the 
> user input a tag name, the program will find 
> the "previous" tag and do a cvs diff between 
> the two tags.
> 
> For example, if the user enter tag E, then the 
> program should cvs diff tag E and D automatically.

If you explain WHY you want this - what the business objective is then
someone can probably help.

CVS was written over 22 years ago and is used by countless people for
running their business of software change and configuration management -
it is very very unlikely that you are so unique that the feature you
require has not been already implemented and used by countless others.  

Instead of specifying the technical feature you require - instead
explain the business objective, eg:

BAD: find previous tag name
GOOD: compare the source code for this release with the source code for
the most recent (chronological) release and provide list of comments for
incorporating into release notes

Back to the technical: one drawback of CVS is that tags do not have a
date or a history, so generally you need to convert a tag to a
branch/date combination then use that.

Regards,


Arthur Barrett



-- 

Hez