Re: Microsoft VSS => CVS

[Laine Stump]

Jon Miner <address@hidden> writes:

> * Laine Stump (address@hidden) [010321 15:48]:
> > There is no CVS equivalent to VSS' sharing of individual repository
> > files into multiple places in the work directory, though.
> 
> Well, not natively in CVS, but if you're running it on a server that
> supports _symlinks_, you can approxmate that behavior, somewhat..  Just
> symlink the actual repository files to multiple places, works rather
> well.

...until one day when the symlinked file magically becomes corrupted.

CVS sets locks on a per-directory basis when it is modifying the
repository (eg for a tag or commit). If a ,v file is symlinked into
multiple directories, two different CVS processes might believe that
they have "the lock" that allows them free reign over that file, and
one will end up clobbering the other.

A symlink of a directory, on the other hand, likely won't cause any
problems. but of course, you can do that via a modules file entry...

> The political issues that you raise are correct, though, testing becomes
> much more complex, I generally use it for simple header files and junk
> that doesn't change much..

That would lower the likelyhood of a corrupted file, but not
completely eliminate the possibility.

> Please, backup and _test_ your backups before you go doing anything that
> involves hopping in to the repository directly..

I'll go along with that. Heck, I even do a backup before every import,
just in case I do something fumble-fingered.