[cvsnt] Admin unedit

[Ian Epperson]

> From: Tony Hoyle [mailto:tmh at nodomain.org] 
>
> Ian Epperson wrote:
> 
> > Is there a way to (cleanly) administratively unedit a file?
> > 
> Not really... edit is a collaboration between client and 
> server - *both*
> parts must exist to cleanly edit or unedit a file.  As far as 
> I can see
> without completely changing the way edit/unedit work there is no way
> to create an administrative unedit, because it would have to 
> try to contact
> the client that created the edit and try to make it do its side of the
> unedit, which would make the client into a server

*Ideally* the unedit must happen on the client as well, however I have to
step in and force the server to unedit BECAUSE this disconnect has already
happened.  I DO NOT want users arbitrarily forcing a server unedit - admin
only!  The assumption is the admin should know better - perhaps the command
could be accompanied by dire warnings - which is what I do now anyway.

I've been doing this by hand for a couple of months now.  Yesterday, the
users really munged things up - one developer left a large project *without*
unediting any files, and another had a system crash.  A third was picking up
the project and found he couldn't edit most of the files.  Fileattr was a
mess.  Took me over an hour - had to start over three times (my computer
crashed, bad search/replace argument (reload file), user changed the module
(reload *again*)).  

If there were some kind of "cvs admin -F unedit *.*" or even better "cvs
admin -F unedit Bill" it could have been a 30 second process (assuming I had
to check everything out).