Re: RCSs and CFEngine

[Robert Helmer]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 11:54:03AM -0500, Jason Martin wrote:
> Has anyone had any good / bad experiences when using a revision
> control system (cvs, arch, subversion, etc) to store CFEngine
> configuration? I know CVS is rather picky about adding /
> deleting directories, and was wondering what experiences others
> have had with various systems.

I use CVS to store Cfengine's config, and have Cfengine use CVSup
(http://cvsup.org) to get it out of CVS.

The important thing to remember about CVS is that it's based
on RCS, so it doesn't version directories (as well as the other usual
RCS caveats, like no real atomic "rename" command, and all files are
versioned independently).

The usual convention is to remove all files from a directory if you don't 
want it to appear, and use the "prune" option when doing updates.
If you are using CVS export, update with the "-dP" options, or
CVSup, then it works fine. 

If I was starting from scratch, I'd probably try to go with Subversion,
since I really believe the atomic commits, rename etc. features are
a good idea, although I must say that CVSup is really the ideal way to 
get both of the benefits of an export and an update. I am
not sure if there is anything equivalent to extract files from
Subversion's database without having a real workspace, or
waiting for a full export.

I've been using CVS and CVSup for years before the Subversion project
started, so that's part of why I'm still on it I'm sure :)


Thanks,
Rob