Re: CVS Update Behaviour

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Sunday, February 24, 2002 at 20:24:15 (+0100), Nagy Gabor wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: CVS Update Behaviour
>
> I think renaming and moving files accross directories is nice to have.
> I don't think it is necessary, in a way that I can live without this
> feature. 
> 
> But if I think that this would make my life easier, don't try to tell me,
> I shouldn't _think_ that.

You should not be using CVS if you think it should automatically handle
all manner of renames and hide all the resulting issues from the user.

CVS is designed for use in those scenarios where using RCS alone would
cause your developers to rip the hair from their scalps (and/or from the
scalps of their colleagues).  RCS clearly only manages files -- on its
own it doesn't even have a way of removing a file, except by not tagging
it for inclusion in release, or not branching it.

CVS already handles file renames in an adequate manner, with much more
support than RCS (files can be removed from normal view!).  It does not
try to hide renames from the user though.  This is a good thing.  There
are many issues fall out of renaming files.  These issues are generally
not well understood and the users of CVS need to be well aware of
renames that have happened so that they can deal with these issues
properly.

> When I discovered cvs did not know this, I was puzzled, and sad.

I am puzzled and sad that you could not figure this out on first meeting
and learning CVS.  It really should be as self evident as it is well
documented in the manual.

> And I still long for the mapping of entities to filenames. What I would
> like to see, is a kind of Inode way of storing things in the repository.
> Multiple names of the same entity, renames, anything. And one
> representation

You really need to learn more about how CVS works internally.  If you
had chosen CVS because RCS was insufficient for your needs then I think
you would be happy not to have such a mapping layer.  CVS handles
renames by way of removing and adding files.  No history is lost, but
also no complications are introduced by such a mapping layer.

> Lastly: If there is something that doesn't hurt you, (you can cat a
> file to another name and rm the old one, don't have to mv, so you can do
> it as you always did) but others would like to have that particular
> feature, why object? Why do you want to judge if it is rightfully needed
> by others?

Implementing a mapping layer in CVS will hurt CVS.  It is impossible to
implement such a mapping layer without destroying backwards
compatability.  CVS is highly valued by many of its users because it
simply automates what can be done tediously with RCS alone.  This means
that CVS does not implement a "proprietary" repository format that
cannot be moved with ease to other tools that understand the same
format, and indeed the RCS format is widely understood both by tools and
by humans.  It is stable and quite capable for the basic requirement of
the job.

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

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