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Re: emacs vc support for subversion


From: Lee Sau Dan
Subject: Re: emacs vc support for subversion
Date: 13 Feb 2005 23:50:59 +0800
User-agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3

>>>>> "Joakim" == Joakim Hove <hove@ift.uib.no> writes:

    Joakim> I have (for the umpteenth time) determined that *now* is
    Joakim> the time to use a Version Control system. My previous
    Joakim> (failed) attempts have been based on CVS, 

Could you reveal why they failed?

Using plain 'vc' with CVS is not that convenient (although I did do it
from 1995  to 2000).  I had  to resort to 'xterm'  for many operations
relatively  frequently.   Until I  discovered  the "PCL-CVS"  package,
which  makes using CVS  from within  Emacs so  pleasant.  As  easy and
convenient as  using dir-ed  (vs. using the  command shell).   It's so
nice  that  starting from  Emacs  21.?   (can't  remember which  minor
version), PCL-CVS comes bundled with Emacs.


    Joakim> this time  I was planning  to try out  subversion. However
    Joakim> emacs support is essential - how is that subversion?

There is a 'psvn' package, which is the equivalent of PCL-CVS for svn.
It is as convenient and easy to use as PCL-CVS.  It still doesn't come
with standard Emacs, but you can find it on the web.  I can't remember
how I learnt to used 'psvn', but certainly I exploited my knowledge of
PCL-CVS  and could  very quickly  become comfortable  with  'psvn'.  I
think  I learnt  the  differences by  reading  the LISP  documentation
strings in psvn.el.  (The Info pages on PCL-CVS could be useful, too.)

I  didn't  download  the  psvn.el  myself.   The  Debian  package  for
subversion already  includes psvn.el and vc-svn.el.  The  latter is an
extension to (or a new backend for) vc.el, which makes vc support svn.
It  isn't needed if  you're only  using 'psvn'.   But 'vc-svn'  can be
handy when  you want to  do VC operations  (e.g. diff, revert  to last
checked-in version) on the file connected with the current buffer.


In  any case,  you  have to  be  familiar with  the CVS/SVN  concepts,
commands and  operations before PCL-CVS/psvn would make  sense to you.
Much  like you need  to understand  permissions when  you use  the "M"
command in  dired.  So, if you're  a beginner in svn,  you'd better go
through its  nice many and experiment  a bit with its  examples on the
command line  first.  As  you get familiar  with the commands  and the
usage pattern,  learning PCL-CVS/psvn would  be easy.  They  just make
"typing" those commands much easier and much more convenient.


-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     李守敦                          ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

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