Re: *BSD use of branch point tags w/ CVS

[Steve Greenland]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2002 at 03:59:17PM -0800, Claude Johnson wrote:
> From reading some of the docs about NetBSD's and FreeBSD's
> release processes, I have noticed that they both use what
> FreeBSD calls "branch point" tags. Not having a lot of
> experience with CVS, I don't quite understand what problem
> is solved by doing this. The FreeBSD release docs claim
> that it is impossible to diff against the start of a branch
> w/o a branch point tag in place.

Exactly. (Well, not impossible, if you know the date/time that the
branch was done, but certainly inconvenient.) Remember, the branch tag
itself basically refers to the current state of the branch (the tip of
the limb), not where it started. If you branch, make some edits and
commits on the branch, and now want to see everything that has changed
*since* the branch, you need a branch point tag (or at least, that makes
it much more convenient).

Steve