[Gnumed-devel] comments about cvs stuff

[David Grant]

Just some general comments:

DISCLAIMER: I do not know the repository very well, nor do I know 
everything there is to know about gnumed thus far, so I have probably 
made some assumptions in what I say.  Please tell me if I am wrong.  I 
have some exp. using CVS and some recent exp. setting up a repository 
and trying to come up with some CVS guidelines and for a voluteer 
project I'm working on.

I'm not sure if I agree with the philosophy of sticking stuff in a 
test-area and then moving it back.  If something is already IN the main 
directory of the repository, modifications should be done in a checked 
out version in the users working directory, and then comited in there.  
Moving the files to test-area encourages a "commit infrequently" policy.

I think files should be "cvs remove"d and "cvs add"ed as few times as 
possible.  As far as I can remember, it is a nightmare to move a file 
like $MAINDIR/subdir/test.c into $MAINDIR if there is a file 
$MAINDIR/test.c already there which may have been modified.  If you're 
going to change a file, no need to move it anywhere.  Just edit it 
there.  "cvs update", edit, verify if it compiles and runs, "cvs diff" 
each changed file individually (I prefer this strongly!), loop back to 
the first step until satisfied, "cvs commit".  "cvs add" and "cvs 
remove" can make things complicated and I think this is gist of what 
went wrong in gnumed recently.

Parts of syan's code caused the tree to be broken, led patches to be 
reverted (apparently), and led to some files being commited although 
they had no changes in them, except a new $Log :$ due to a cvs move.  I 
think all this could have been prevented, and syan's reputation been 
saved, had the above "tips" been followed.

NEW code which is untested could go in the test-area, I guess, although 
there's not really much point.  It might as well go right into the main 
tree...it shouldn't break other stuff, or at least it won't break 
anything any more than if it was in test-area.

Regular tags of the repository should be made.  A few of the files logs 
I looked at had no tags, so I assume this isn't done so far.  Maybe you 
think you're not ready for an 0_1 tag...but they are a good tool to use 
anyways.


Dave

--
David J. Grant
M.A.Sc. Candidate in Electrical Engineering
a-Si and Integrated Circuits Lab
University of Waterloo
Room DC3707
519-888-4567 x2872
http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~djgrant