Re: How to get list of tags?

[A.R. (Tom) Peters]

On Wed, 23 May 2001, Derek R. Price wrote:

> "A.R. (Tom) Peters" wrote:

> > I'm sorry, I've perused that section and its links, but I did NOT find any
> > description of the meaning of the OUTPUT of the `cvs history` commands, in
> > particular not on how to interpret the output with the "-T" option.
> 
> Well, you missed at least one link:
> 
>     http://cvshome.org/docs/manual/cvs_16.html#SEC134

There is hardly any information there.  The subsequent section lists the
command line options, but not what the meaning is of the output that you
get - which differs depending on the options.  For instance, in the
Coriolis book no example is given of an output using the '-T'
(tag) option, and I have had difficulty in interpreting it.


> > Any specific information, especially on how to determine if a tag is
> > sticky or a branch tag, would be welcome.
> 
> Sticky tags are only relevant to the repository.

My experience if different.  Suppose I check out a release with some tag,
and it happens to be a sticky tag.  Now I make bugfixes, and want to check
in my changes.  I am not allowed to do that!  You can only do that if your
working directory is on the stem or on a branch.  So I must know the
status of the tag before I use it to check out some version of the
project.


But thanx, this is really helpful:

> T 2001-01-05 17:56 +0000 scjones foo [test:A]
> 
> T                   operation (tag)
> 2001-01-05 17:56    date time

Interesting, the CVS we are using at the office only produces what looks
like a month a day - which drives me mad since the project has been going
on for a few years.
So what do I do to get to see the year too in the output?
- is that a novelty introduced sometime in the not-too-distant past?
- is it a configurable option?

> +0000               I don't recall - may be a general 
> line number change field
> scjones             user who performed action
> foo                 module tagged
> [test:A]            see below
>     test              tagname arg
>     A                 A|D|tagname where
>         A               add
>         D               delete
>         tagname         tag applied to (copy/branch operation,
>                         e.g. 'rtag -roldtag test' would produce
>                         [test:oldtag])

Nevertheless, I am still puzzled about a few things:

- When doing a 'cvs history -a -T', I see numerous tag events using the
same tag name.  Is that common, or have my predecessors been making a real
mess?  How can the same tag name be used multiple times, how can CVS keep
track ? I certainly can't.

- Recently I applied a sticky tag to some old branch release that I had
checked out.  However, it does not appear among the tag events with the
`cvs history -a -T` command.  Nevertheless, I seem to be able to check
out the proper set of files; and the script posted by Pascal Bourguignon 
in this thread, using `cvs log` instead of 'history', does extract the tag
name I used.  So in this case, a certain tag name does NOT appear out of
the history listing: how come?

Both of these follow from an expansion of my original question: the issue
is not only what is the meaning of each column in the '-T' output; but
also, what is the meaning of a line: under what conditions, what is the
event for which, does the cvs command produce a line in this listing.


> Documentation patches gladly accepted.

Well, it would be great if the explanation above were included.

--
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        Tom "thriving on chaos" Peters
                        e-mail  address@hidden