Re: am files in CVS and MAINTAINER_MODE

[Bob Rossi]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 01:13:26PM -0600, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Jan 2006, Bob Rossi wrote:
> >>
> >>yes (CVS isn't the best tool - it happens to be one of the cheapest).
> >>Since it doesn't preserve timestamps or permissions, it's something
> >>that we wouldn't consider in $dayjob.
> >
> >Does subversion preserve these?
> 
> I am sure that when working, Subversion is the coolest thing since 
> sliced bread.  What turned me off to it is that its operating/runtime 
> requirements are much more substantial than CVS due to its use of a 
> complex database.  Subversion itself does not seem nearly as portable 
> as CVS.  Subversion is not useful (to me) if its client can not be 
> easily compiled in (or downloaded for) every modern target 
> environment.  Maybe things have improved since I tried last.

Hi Bob,

Subversion no longer forces the use of the berkley DB. In fact, by
default it uses the FSFS backend.
  http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/fsfs

This is the initial reason I was turned off by svn also.

Also, I read this from the subversion book:

  use-commit-times

    Normally your working copy files have timestamps that reflect the last 
    time they were touched by any process, whether that be your own editor 
    or by some svn subcommand. This is generally convenient for people 
    developing software, because build systems often look at timestamps as 
    a way of deciding which files need to be recompiled.

    In other situations, however, it's sometimes nice for the working copy 
    files to have timestamps that reflect the last time they were changed 
    in the repository. The svn export command always places these 
    .last-commit timestamps. on trees that it produces. By setting this 
    config variable to yes, the svn checkout, svn update, svn switch, and 
    svn revert commands will also set last-commit timestamps on files that 
    they touch.

Anyways, with all that the auto tools provide, this is the single most
frustrating problem that I have. I wish there was an elegant solution
with CVS to store the generated files. Is there?

Thanks,
Bob Rossi