Re: cvs and symlinks

[Kaz Kylheku]

On Wed, 3 Apr 2002, William Sweet wrote:

> Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 10:31:14 -0500
> From: William Sweet <address@hidden>
> To: "'address@hidden'" <address@hidden>
> Subject: [info-cvs] cvs and symlinks
> 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I'm rather new to CVS, but have been given the task to implement at our site
> as the versioning control system for Register.com. I understand that CVS
> ignores symlinks on import. My question is then, if I perform a co, our
> symlinks will not be there, correct? I understand that there is a way to
> recreate symlinks by using the modules file, but I can't find any further

No, the modules file does not recreate symlinks. Symbolic links are
simply not versioned elements under CVS. Moreover, they are a very
platform and filesystem specific artifact. Nevertheless, some version
control systems are capable of storing symbolic links.

> documentation on the subject. Can someone assist me, by example, how I can
> re-create a symlink through CVS?

The workaround is to run a script to regenerate your symbolic links.

Consider the symbolic links to be an artifact of your deliverable
software, which is derived from version controlled source files.

In C projects, people sometime use symbolic links as a platform
configuration mechanism. For example ``atomic-ops.h'' could be a
symbolic link to ``atomic-ops-gcc-i386.h'', or
``atomic-ops-gcc-sparc.h'' and so forth. Such a symbolic link is set up
when you configure the compilation of the software for the target
machine; you wouldn't *want* it stored in the repository.

-- 
Meta-CVS: solid version control tool with directory structure versioning. 
http://users.footprints.net/~kaz/mcvs.html