Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 17:34:06 -0500 From: Sergey Babkin <babkin@bellatlantic.net> To: Dag-Erling =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@ofug.org> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: making CVS more convenient Message-ID: <3E764D5E.3FBE3746@bellatlantic.net> References: <3E73DCF7.80490FA6@bellatlantic.net> <xzpn0jvq96p.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>
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Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote: > > Sergey Babkin <babkin@bellatlantic.net> writes: > > A similar thing may be achieved by checking the files out from the local > > repository and doing any modification command with option -d. But that's > > troublesome and inconvenient. > > Read the manual page for the shell you're using, with particular > emphasis on the 'alias' builtin command. I think that it's not a good solution, for several reasons: * Using -d for an alternative repository is pretty much a dirty trick, and undocumented one too. But the purpose itself is quite valid, transparent, and simple and I think that it's better to make it obvious and easy to use than tricky. I like the principle "simple things should be easy, complex things should be possible". * There may be scripts that run cvs commands, which scripts absolutely don't need to know about a cache repository underneath. * I don't like the layers of "workaround scripts" built over other "workaround scripts". I think that it's something of an "aftermarket Unix syndrome": when you can trick a tool to do what you want and wrap it into a script for the ease of use but can't change the tool to do what you need directly, in a simple way. The original Unix (both Bell Labs and BSD) was not like this: when the people made some useful addition, they just got it right into the base system. Now with open source OSes we can do the same thing and not look for extra pain with wrapper scripts. * Getting the cache repository support right into CVS allows to modify the CVS commands in future to take advantage of this knowledge. For example, "commit" may not just check the modification date and send the file to the server if it has changed, but instead also compare the file with the one in the cache repository and send it to the server only if the file has actually changed. -SB To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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