more adventures in CVS

TeeJay on 2003-04-07T15:13:00

Today I managed to totally fuck one of the subdirectories in my working directory.

After much fun, adding,moving and removing tags and files I managed to fix it and hopefully limited the damage to the branch I was working in.

Then after all that I discover that the versions of the files I have just been adding (from the trunk to a branch) were newer than those on the development server and didn't compile.

oh joy!

And this after a 2 hour meeting on the intracacies of our new purchase order system ( 20 page specification ).

uurgh!

On a side note I am thinking of writing a book for people who end up running version control systems. Something like 'Practical Version Control' covering CVS, SVN, RCS and some of the GUI's and plugins available as well as handy recipes and scripts (like blogging commits, integrating bugzilla, web interfaces, etc)

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CVS Book

djberg96 on 2003-04-07T15:27:27

I, for one, would be more than happy to see Applying RCS and SCCS (ORA) revised and updated to include CVS (and get rid of SCCS), plus whatever else.

CVS Book

jbisbee on 2003-04-07T15:28:10

I'd be more than happy to help you with the book. I've been put in charge of CVS in my camp and we also run Bugzilla, Viewcvs, WinCVS, etc. I also want to get an interal IRC server and intergrate a CVS/Bugzilla bot that interacts with both. :)

Practical $foo

dlc on 2003-04-07T15:29:03

On a side note I am thinking of writing a book for people who end up running version control systems. Something like 'Practical Version Control' covering CVS, SVN, RCS and some of the GUI's and plugins available as well as handy recipes and scripts (like blogging commits, integrating bugzilla, web interfaces, etc)

This is a fabulous idea. I've wanted to see a Practical $foo series for a while, and version control systems are definitely a good one to include.

+1

Re:Practical $foo

rafael on 2003-04-07T16:02:05

(link dropping) You might be interested by Brad Appleton's work on software configuration management resources.

Brave Man

barbie on 2003-04-07T15:44:42

While a thoroughly good idea, the time taken to research all varieties of Version Control, is likely to be a long time. How detailed do you go and what apps do you do you cover? Some are limited to specific platforms, others are limited by their accessibity (command line verses GUI). If you do manage it, much respect will be due.

I was introduced to version control some 15+ years ago, with SCCS and RCS. Scary then and scary still. Thank $deity for CVS :)

Re:Brave Man

TeeJay on 2003-04-07T16:05:22

I did a dissertation on version control as part of my final year project (I also designed and implemented a http-like server that provided abstract info on RCS and ither VCS directories on the server with a GTK client).

My plan is to cover RCS, which would also give a good introduction to Version Control basics. Then cover CVS and SVN.

The core of the book would be practical applications of version control

• the how and why of branching and merging and tagging.
• perl and shell scripts and recipes for loginfo, reporting, etc
• Gui's, interfaces, etc
• Integrating with other applications (mysql, bugzilla, etc)
• installing and migrating
• recovering from fuckups

There will probably be a short bit on 'other' systems like bitkeeper and sourcesafe.

Re:Brave Man

dws on 2003-04-07T16:48:39

While a thoroughly good idea, the time taken to research all varieties of Version Control, is likely to be a long time.

Berczuk and Appleton do a high-level skim of the common version control packages in Software Configuration Management Patterns, though they focus on laying out a common language for talking about SCM, and on high-level patterns of usage, and don't get down to the level of actually giving concrete example of how to use product X. Still, if you're going to write a book on CVS, it might help to look over a larger conceptual framework first, at least to avoid the myopia that comes from only ever having used one or two tools.