[evs] Branching on commit, merge documentation

Gerhard Fiedler lists at connectionbrazil.com
Wed Sep 5 22:43:24 BST 2007


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Arthur Barrett wrote:

>> Another is the merge documentation. We have that already partially with
>> the merge points, but this could go a bit further and also include the
>> start and end of two-point merges. This is information one has to track
>> anyway, so why not have the version control system track it, by storing
>> all end points of merges?
>
> How is this different to what CVSNT already does?

I don't see that CVSNT does this at all. When merging in a sequence of
changes (that is, if you're not merging from the top of a parallel branch),
I think there are two methods: bug ids and the update merge with two -j
options. 

I don't know what CVSNT does in the case of merging in a bug id, but I it
doesn't record the two -j options of a double -j merge so that they can be
retrieved with e.g. cvs log (similar to merge points). If it does, is there
any documentation of that? If not, that's what I'm talking about. 

> TCVS already has some functions that combines several CVSNT commands to
> produce one result, so it would seem to me that TCVS (or another GUI)
> would be the better target for such a feature... 
> 
> How would making this "one command" be significantly better?  

The difference is that if it is a command of the versioning system, you
have a higher probability that you can build a procedure on top of it,
because you're more likely to find consistent support for that. If it is a
TCVS feature, the people who can't use TCVS have to provide their own
support for it (which is relatively easy on the command line, but more
complex in other tools), whereas if it is a native feature, support for it
in any wrapper tools is more likely -- and especially more likely to be
consistent.

> What business problem does this solve?

What business problem any of this solves -- or whether it solves a business
problem at all -- depends on the business, and therefore I can't really
answer this question without knowing the business we're talking about. But
I know that for many CVS(NT) users branching and merging is a problem (that
may affect their business :).

Gerhard


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