RE: Request for comments on 'Extending CVS with offline/disconnected operations'

Dear Derek,

No problem, at all, and thanks for the comments.

The reason for suggesting the 'disconnected merge' operation is to allow
working with different working folders, checked out e.g. under Windows
and Linux... I'm working on a multi-platform development project, and
need to frequently use/test/synchronize the changes among them. As the
CVS data structures allows this (completely?), why not having this
functionality as well in addition to add/remove/diff...

Do you think that these 'disconnected operations' could be implemented
outside as a wrapper script/external program or could be part of the cvs
executable?

After revising the 'e-mail transport layer' concept again, I'm not
confident whether it could be implemented efficiently, so I eliminiated
from the concept...

Best regards,
Tamas

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] 
> Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2003 6:01 PM
> To: Tamas Nagy
> Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; 
> [email protected]; [email protected]; 
> [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Request for comments on 'Extending CVS with 
> offline/disconnected operations'
> 
> 
> Sorry for the delayed response.  I've been busy.
> 
> Tamas Nagy wrote:
> 
> >Please have a look at and comment the following proposal at 
> >http://mypage.bluewin.ch/kde3-debian/cvs-delta/cvs-offline.txt ...
> >
> >1.) What's your opinion about the proposed operations/syntax?
> >
> 
> This is an interesting approach.  I've thought for awhile that CVS 
> should be extended to allow many operations to happen offline when 
> necessary.  After all, laptops are still much more common 
> than wireless 
> internet access.  Especially add/remove and diff against the base 
> revision.  All that should be necessary for diff would be storing the 
> base revision in CVS/Base like `cvs edit' already does and then some 
> special casing.
> 
> >2.) Do you believe CVS could be naturally extended this way, 
> or should 
> >be dropped in favor of other versioning tool?
> >
> 
> Like I said, I've been keeping some of this in the back of my 
> mind for 
> some time but have never found the time to implement it.
> 
> >3.) Could any popular CVS client-app could be easily extended to 
> >support these 'offline operations'?
> >
> 
> Diff & add/remove could for sure.  `cvs up -C' too, using the Base 
> revision as I mentioned for diff.  I'm not sure why you 
> bother with the 
> merge operation.  If `cvs diff' works, you should just be able to run 
> the result through patch.
> 
> >4.) Do you see any conceptual problem with the proposed operations?
> >
> 
> Nope.  Not as I understand them.
> 
> >5.) Would you consider to use/implement offline operations or an 
> >e-mail-based cvs transport protocol in a CVS client app?
> >
> 
> I think I would write a wrapper script around CVS calls for any 
> email-based transport.  The rest of it I'd like to see 
> implemented, but 
> I don't have time right now to do it myself.  If anyone 
> submitted fairly 
> complete patches, I'd be happy to review and maybe commit them.
> 
> >6.) ...
> >
> >Thanks and really appreciate your time and opinion in advance, Tamas 
> >Nagy
> >  
> >
> 
> Hope that was useful.  Please send further direct inquiries to the 
> <[email protected]> mailing list and not directly to me unless I've 
> already joined the discussion.  If I've joined the 
> discussion, feel free 
> to continue cc'ing me.
> 
> Derek
> 
> -- 
>                 *8^)
> 
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>