Re: Repository know who has checkouts?

[Laird Nelson]

"Derek R. Price" wrote:
> Well, I view the 'chmod u+w' or 'cvs edit' requirement as a side effect of a
> user watching those files.  CVS has to be running in order to send the notices
> user A requested, so user B has to run 'cvs edit' when he wants to edit or 
> else
> there won't be a running process that knows to send the notification to user
> A.  The alternative seems to be some sort of kernel daemon or a periodic cron
> job watching access times to send the notices.  Or maybe a wrapper script for
> every editor the user could use which looks for a CVS directory, checks
> permissions, then calls 'cvs edit' if it deems it necessary.  I think all of
> these solutions would be daunting for many users to install.  Possibly even
> nightmaric to automate in a distributed project, as I imagine many open source
> projects are.  Take SourceForge as an example if you like.  Hmm... 
> distribution
> scenarios come to mind, but they're all extra work anyhow.  I'm sure requiring
> users to tell CVS they were ready to edit seemed the most expedient at the 
> time
> the feature was added and remains so.

Agreed entirely.  The only bit of this whole watch on/watch off (Karate
Kid, anyone?) discussion that I find odd is on the non-technical level,
which you don't really address above, viz. that *any* user on the
project located *anywhere* can cause my sandbox to behave differently
than it did yesterday (when next I perform an update, of course).  The
thrust of my comments is this: I'd prefer "any user" to be replaced with
"a designated user", and "anywhere" with...well, location doesn't really
matter.  :-)

To put it another way, if I got into the rut previously of just editing
a file and not having to run some command first, then I don't want that
rut to change unless someone on my project who is authorized to cause
such changes makes it happen (that's better communication, actually,
than letting any user mess with my development habits).

(Again, this is mainly because our user base consists of people who look
at cvs distrustingly to begin with; any perceived-to-be-random changes
that occur are likely to make them bitch and whine at me.  :-))

Cheers,
Laird