[cvsnt] Re: deleting a module from repository

Bo Berglund bo.berglund at telia.com
Tue Aug 17 22:35:19 BST 2004


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On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 15:29:25 -0600, "Siegfried Heintze"
<siegfried at heintze.com> wrote:

>
>Can you elaborate on your emphasis? Why might we be so reluctant to delete
>directories in the repository?
>

The CVS repository is a store that holds the complete history of all
source files of all of the controlled projects. As such it is supposed
to be able to bring back exactly any demanded old file situation (by
the use of tags) of any project and every single once existing
revision of any file.
In this context it is really a bad idea to go into the repository
(which resides in the server) and delete anything forcibly using
operating system tools. What this does is permanently destroy any hope
of being able to restore old files in the future. This is why Glen put
the emphasis on the delete suggestion.

On the other hand if you are experimenting in a test repository and
know what you are doing, then you can of course remove modules
(=directories) from the server as much as you like.

When you use the cvs remove command all it does is that it mark the
file in the repository as non-existing for future work, but it is
still there for retrieval of old tagged snapshots. The removal is
information that gets stored into the RCS file in the repository as
information.
And since CVS does not deal with folders in a source control sense
these cannot be removed at all, once created they stay there.

Hope this helps,

/Bo
(Bo Berglund, developer in Sweden)



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