[cvsnt] mirror/synchronize cvs repositories (CVSNTUpd) ?

Gerhard Fiedler lists at connectionbrazil.com
Wed Nov 30 22:40:11 GMT 2005


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Tony Hoyle wrote:

> To summarize and round up the thread:

For me that's not "rounded up"... the proposal wouldn't fit my needs at
all.

> which meant that it was hard to get adequate access to their current
> source tree. 

It's often (not sure about others, but with me) not only about the source
tree, it's about the source tree history.

> My assertion is that mirroring is only papering over the cracks in this
> situation, 

Of course. Nobody disagreed with that. But if paper is the best you have
and if you can make it work... that's engineering, then.

> and wouldn't be practical as you'd have to tie up a dialup line (and the
> server) for hours at a time, 

Often not a problem. There are many sites that are empty for hours at a
time. So tying up their line during that time is not a problem. (That's a
common practice with large data transfers, even on T1 lines.) It's also not
that much a problem to get a separate line just for those repository
mirrorings; something that's possible even if it costs a bit, differently
from broadband where it's not available.

And the server wouldn't be tied up. I'm not sure how you come to that
conclusion; if that's the case when you do it, you must be doing something
wrong. Of course I would not mirror the life repository; I'd mirror a local
snapshot copy. That one is created rather quickly, doesn't take longer than
a backup. (Which one could use for synchronizing... so not even a second
snapshot necessary.)

> only to get a mirror that's out of date before you even use it. 

"Out of date" is extremely relative. Some things are out of date after a
millisecond, others are still valid a week later. For supervising a
programmer crew, synchronizing the mirror more than once a day shouldn't be
necessary. If you need to supervise them by the minute, you probably have
the wrong programmers -- and in any case you have other problems than
missing broadband then. For me, it's enough to review on Wednesday the work
from Tuesday. Often I don't need it even that quickly; but I still want the
full history.

> The best you can do is to do regular cvs update commands (a couple of
> times a day maybe) - that'll be the most up to date you can get.. it'll
> be slow but workable. 

Not necessarily significantly faster than mirroring the repository. Doesn't
give a full file history. Definitely not the best one can do, IMO.


> note that this is unrelated to the availability of ADSL in a forest in
> outer mongolia - a company should locate itself where the resources it
> needs to survive exist. 

That's what companies do. And some actually only think in and live by those
terms. But there are also people around who haven't forgotten that
companies are in essence a company of people and know that people often
live and work somewhat independently of availability of fast ADSL. And,
more importantly, try (and often succeed) to make it work with those people
without it. 

Gerhard



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