[cvsnt] Re: Best practices for shadow sandbox

[Oliver Giesen]

John J. Xenakis wrote:

> >   AFAIK you can also specify the -kx option there. The possible
> >   disadvantage with this is that some of the client tools may not be
> >   aware of this option. For example, I don't know whether Tortoise
> >   does the automatic update-before-edit on -kx files (like it does
> >   on -kb files).
> 
> I don't follow this.  There's a -kx option for "cvs edit" which
> guarantees exclusive use, but as you say, Tortoise doesn't appear to
> use it.  And there's the -kb option for "cvs add", which specifies
> binary.  Is that what you mean?

Yes and no. Try running cvs -n up -k? inside a sandbox and you will get
a list of the available -k options (aka "file flags", aka "file
options", aka "keyword expansion modes", aka "hell knows what else").
Here's what my CVSNT 2.5.03.2151 reports:

Valid flags are one of:
t       Text file (default)
b       Binary file (merges not allowed).
B       Binary file using binary deltas (merges not allowed).
u       Unicode (UCS-2) file with BOM.
{encoding}      Extended encoding type
Followed by any of:
c       Force reserved edit.
x       Force exclusive edit.
k       Substitute keyword.
v       Substiture value.
l       Generate lockers name.
s       File is static (requires commit -f to change).
L       Generate Unix style line endings on checkout.
D       Generate DOS style line endings on checkout.
M       Generate MAC style line endings on checkout.
o       Don't change keywords.
z       Compress deltas within RCS files.
1       Only store a single revision in the file.

Originally (and in GNU CVS this is still the case) the k-options were
intended solely for specifying if and how keywords (e.g. $Author$,
$Revision$, $Log$, etc.) get expanded on checkout. CVSNT extended this
property to control a lot more, among other things how the file get
stored inside the repository and, more the point of your question, the
default behaviour regarding edit/unedit/commit.

These options are typically applied to a file upon adding or importing
it, using something like:

cvs add -kBc SomeDocument.doc

This would add the file SomeDocument.doc in binary mode but using
binary deltas for storage efficiency. It would also result in the file
always being checked out read-only and any edit and commit operations
would always imply the -c option (i.e. "check for valid edits") being
used.

Putting the following into cvswrappers:

*.doc -kBc

and then simply adding the file using this:

cvs add SomeDocument.doc

would have exactly the same effect.


You could also change the k-option of files that have already been
added. For this you would have to use the following sequence of
commands:

cvs up -kBc SomeDocument.doc
cvs ci -m"changed k-mode" -f SomeDocument.doc

[Note that this only works with recent builds of CVSNT. Older builds
and GNU CVS do not version k-option changes and require you to make the
change via the cvs admin -k command]

Hope this helps.

-- 
Oliver
----  ------------------
JID:  ogiesen at jabber.org
ICQ:  18777742     (http://wwp.icq.com/18777742)