Re: How well does CVS handle other types of data?

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Friday, July 13, 2001 at 10:19:49 (-0700), Jimmy Rimmer wrote: ]
> Subject: Please, stop.  (was RE: How well does CVS handle other types of d    
> ata?)
>
> CVS is a tool, not a policy.  What people love about CVS is that it is a
> tool that fits just about ANY policy they can devise.

Well, not to put too sharp a point on this, but you are missing the
point.

> CVS does not define policy.  It defines the mechanism.  

CVS does actually imply a certain amount of hard-coded policy.  There's
this little bit about not just allowing, but really enforcing, the
ability to do concurrent edits.  What falls out of this is the need for
merging.  CVS makes a concurrent editing policy livable, and indeed
desirable when dealing with text-based source code, because it also
implements a mostly automated merging and conflict detection process.

If you want to turn automated merging off (either globally or on a
per-file basis) in CVS then you must first define a mechanism for
telling CVS when a manual merge has been completed (without any
remaining conflicts, of course).  This is easy for the case of
concurrent edits, and harder for the case of branch merges.  See another
of my recent replies for more details.

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

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