[cvsnt] cvsnt / samba problem

[John Peacock]

Patrick Olinet wrote:
> When you deal with web developpment, you spend a lot of time 
> adding/fixing visual effects in your html code and you'd like to see the 
> results often and quickly through you web browser accessing your web 
> server.

Been there, done that!  We use autoupdated web sites all day long, and have for 
a couple of years (multiple developers).  Before POSTCOMMIT was available, I had 
another way of doing it which required somewhat less than 1 minute lag between 
commit and the file being active on the web site.  It is something you quickly 
get used to and it doesn't slow down development in any measureable way.  Think 
of it as a way to write good code to start with, rather than the scribble/check 
way of thinking. ;~)

> also think that it would also 'pollute' the CVS repository by putting 
> some potential broken files in it (your working html file could contain 
> typos, your php files may not even compile, ...). But I understand that 
> this may not be a problem for some users because tags can help dealing 
> with that.
> 

It really doesn't hurt to have lots of versions in the repository.  And yes, 
using tags (or forcing the revision to the next major level) does nicely deal 
with broken intermediate versions.  We have branched a site on the test server 
prior to major code changes, keeping the HEAD on the production server, and 
simply merged the test code back to HEAD only when it was stable (and the task 
was complete).  It is absolutely not a problem to have broken code on the test 
server; it is only a big problem to have it on the production server. ;~)

That said, if you are dealing with pure HTML (i.e. no SSI/CGI/etc), there is 
absolutely no reason to save that to the web server to preview it.  Most quality 
editors either provide a preview mode or can push the page to a browser (via DDE 
or COM, typically).  The only time you _have_ to commit/update the web server is 
when you are writing active pages of some sort.  And believe me, it takes almost 
no time to commit and have the autoupdate run (frequently less time than it 
takes for me to switch to my browser).

HTH

John