[cvsnt] RE: Notification when cvs "touches" a local file

[Hartmut Honisch]

> If you see Entries change you could presumably check for differences
> against the previous copy - NTFS always seems to work in alphabetical
> order so comparison is a relatively trivial exercise

That means that I have to back up each Entries file in the sandbox prior to
a "cvs update" and afterwards compare the new Entries file and the backup
copy to see what has changed? I guess I could do that - I'm just afraid that
it might be quite slow when a user is updating a large sandbox. I'd have to
backup hundreds of Entries files and compare them afterwards (compared to
the time required for the CVS update operation itself, it'll still be quite
fast I guess).

Is there a way for CVSNT to notify TCVS before it starts rewriting an
Entries file (and give it time to back it up - but how would CVSNT know TCVS
is done backin up??), and again notify TCVS after it's done rewriting the
file? Then TCVS would only have to backup one single Entries file at a time,
and not the entrire sandbox. And as the CVSNT client probably spends most of
its time waiting for the server, TCVS could use that spare CPU time to
detect the Entries changes and notify the Windows shell.

Even better (and easier for CVSNT probably) would be if CVSNT could - prior
to processing a directory - read the old Entries file and pass it to TCVS
(e.g. via stdout, named pipe etc.). Then no Entries backups would be
necessary at all, and after CVSNT says it's done processing a directory,
TCVS could read the new Entries file and compare.

-Hartmut