Sharing common java source files

[Fredrik Wendt]

Hi all!

I just recently got my rather small development team to agree on start using 
CVS which I hope will turn out great for all of us. Previously, there has 
been no mans of controlling versions of files - at best, someone has updated 
a version number in some comment at the head of the files, but that won't 
help much when drag-n-drop copying is involved.

Why I am mailing you all this:

The development is java-based, hence pretty soon (as we get on to the next 
project in two or three weeks) we will be in the situation of reusing some of 
our java classes, namely those of tld.company.util.*. Naturally, I'd like to 
share those java source files among several to be projects using CVS but I 
have found little information on how to do this successfully. Googling around 
hasn't given me much (nothing), the Cederqvist's examples on how to use the 
$CVSROOT/modules file says very little about this, the examples are not very 
hands-on in my case (I know, they're just examples).

However, what I've done so far is to set our $CVSROOT/modules up like this:

<quote>
# SUBMODULES

java-sql        -d tld/company/company/ java/tld/company/sql/
java-util       -d tld/company/util/ java/tld/company/util/
docs-sql        -d docs/sql/ docs-sql
docs-linktranet -d docs/linktranet/ docs-linktranet

# ACTUAL MODULES

sql             &java-sql &java-util &docs-sql
linktranet      &java-util &docs-linktranet
</quote>

This does the job but I'd like to know:

A) if there's a better way of achieving this - to share common java source 
files among projects, and

B) if there is some way of hiding those modules that I've called SUBMODULES 
above, from the cvs-clients connecting (you normally wouldn't checkout only 
the submodules).

Any ideas are more than welcome, since I'd really like to embrace this 
opportunity to get my co-workers to enjoy and appreciate the full benefits of 
CVS.

Thanks in advance.

Fredrik Wendt