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

[Arthur Barrett]

Hez,

> We always tag the entire module for every 
> maintenance release.
> 
> Currently, the developer will fix the bug, tag 
> the entire module and then create a package containing 
> only the modified files.
> 
> The problem is in some cases, the developer will miss 
> some files in the package.
> 
> To avoid this problem, we are planning to automate 
> this process:
> The developer will specify the tag's name of the release 
> he has created, and the program will package all the 
> modified files by cvs diff the latest two tags.
> 
> 
> With the same program, we can always re-create a 
> package for a previous release.
> For example while the latest release is 1.8, we 
> want to re-create a package for 1.2.
> 
> 
> So we are figuring how to find the previous tag to do the cvs diff ...

The simple answer is that the automated program should track the last
time it was ran, and instead diff from that date to the user specified
tag.  Of course it could just as easily track the last tag it used and
use that.  Your automated program is going to need to store something
eventually - if it stores it in a text file it can then even version it
using CVS...

We (and many others) encountered similar business problems (release
tracking), and added specific features to CVSNT (free/unix just like
CVS) to assist with this.  Tags are not suitable for tracking changes
since they identify a revision not a range of revisions, so CVSNT has
user defined change set ids (also known as bug ids) that can exist on
many revisions of many files.  CVSNT then allows you to merge using
these bug ids or report on them using the audit database.  We combine
the bug ids with promotion levels - a special branch that we merge
releases on to based on change sets.

Im sure others on the newsgroup will reply with the ways they have
addressed the same problem.

Regards,


Arthur
        





-- 

Hez