[cvsnt] Re: Best practices for shadow sandbox

John J. Xenakis mhare at jxenakis.com
Mon Jan 2 23:45:02 GMT 2006


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Dear Bo,

Thank you for your response.  It's greatly appreciated.

>   Please consider thta CVSNT is a *server* and as such has no user
>   interface whatsoever. The client part of CVSNT is a command line
>   utility and must be run with the proper arguments.

>   What you use if you are not comfortable with this is a graphic
>   front end to the command line client cvs, WinCvs or Tortoise.

>   But any usability and GUI features etc that you miss or have not
>   found should be discussed on the respective forums for these
>   products. This list is for the server and the command line
>   client.

I believe that all the questions I asked were about CVSNT
functionality.  I used Tortoise and WinCvs as examples.

However, this illustrates the problem where important issues are
falling through the cracks.  I came to this forum looking for an
overall solution of "best practices" with CVSNT.  If your only
response to this question is to refer me to the WinCvs forum, then
what does that tell me about CVSNT?

>   >> > - Exclusive edit locks
>   >> > 
>   >> > I want the restriction that only one person at a time can edit any
>   >> > given file to be strictly enforced (even for text files).  [...]

>   You can always set up the CVSNT server to require "reserved
>   edits", which for all normal purposes amount to the same thing as
>   the exclusive locks which are not supported by CVSNT. If I
>   remember correctly you put something into the cvswrappers file on
>   the server and it applies to all files if you like.

I've been trying to get cvswrappers to work, but haven't been able
to.  But I'm going to try a solution suggested by Oliver Giesen in
another message.

>   Wrong, the cvs ls commands opens up a repository browsing
>   function that is used by WinCvs in order to *browse* the
>   repository. Has been there several years by now.... ...

>   Also wrong! You can check out whole modules, submodules or single
>   files with CVS, there is no block anywhere for that! Why do you
>   think there is????

I was aware of "cvs ls", but hearing that "cvs co" can check out
individual files is a big surprise to me.  I went back to the
documentation (cvs.pdf), and I tried "cvs --help co", and they're
both quite clear that co only checks out modules.  So I hope that
provides an adequate answer to your question, "Why do you think there
is [a block]????"

Anyway, prompted by your comments, I experimented with it, and
discovered a bug:

>   cvs co sampleb\common\test.txt

errors out with the message:

>   cvs [checkout aborted]: no such directory `sampleb\common'

However, the following do work:

>   cvs co sampleb\common/test.txt
>   cvs co sampleb/common/test.txt
>   cvs co sampleb\common
>   cvs co sampleb/common

(In each case, run the test with no existing sampleb subdirectory
below your working directory.)

>   Definitely! I think you should be an experienced user yourself
>   before you start doing consultancy work on a product like this.
>   Did you ever try it out yourself in serious work???

Well, that's a nice philosophy of life, but if I had to be an expert
at something before I could do it, then I'd never be able to do
anything.  At any rate, I've used CVS on software development
projects in the past, but I've never done an installation from
scratch.

>   Again, what are you referring to when you repeat "shadow". To me
>   it sounds very strange.

The "shadow sandbox" or "shadow directories" concept is used in VSS
and is also described in the CVSNT manual.  It refers to a place
where all files in the project are automatically checked out by the
system whenever the repository is updated.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
Xenakis Consulting Services Inc.
44 Dinsmore Ave #304
Framingham, MA 01702
Phone: 508-875-4266
E-mail: john at jxenakis.com
http://www.jxenakis.com

a.a



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