Re: [boost] SourceForge/CVS Progress

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-07-19 07:47:05

At 09:34 AM 7/18/2000 -1000, Thomas Plum wrote:

 >Tracking structure changes (renaming, changing dir structure, etc) has
 >been a problem with all the source control I've seen so far, and I've
 >used "roll-your-own" approaches in our small shop.  But just now a
 >technique occurs to me ...
 >
 >How about adding a new shell-script component at the top-level dir
 >named e.g.  structure-changes.ksh , with this intended use:  All the
 >component source files are maintained with their original names, and
 >their original place in the dir structure, but after extracting a
 >complete source set, the  structure-changes.ksh  script is executed,
 >which re-names, removes, moves, etc, as needed to produce the
 >"latest and greatest" product structure.  One benefit comes for free ...
 >each structural change becomes an ordinary text-file change for the
 >source-control to track, along with all the other source-file changes.

That strikes me as being a useful technique, but only as a workaround for a 
version control system shortcoming.  Another workarounds might include 
adding a comment to the file involved indicating its old name or old 
directory.  That way these name changes will at least show up on 
diffs.  But again, that's just a workaround.

It really seems a first class version control system could track directory 
and file name changes along with text changes.

Experienced users of a system have often become hardened to the system's 
shortcomings.  These same shortcomings stand out like a sore thumb to new 
users.  I guess we ought to let the CVS maintainers know our needs.

--Beman