on 4/12/01 10:37 AM, "Ceki Gülcü" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I suppose this horse was thoroughly beaten to death but I still would like to
> hear about the pros and cons of including binary files in CVS.
>
> The advantages are:
>
> - By including required jar files for an application, the installation becomes
> easier as the user does not need to fetch them herself.
At least with regards to installation of the application from CVS. This is
also applicable to development as well. The developer doesn't need to do
this either.
> - Only versions of the binaries known to work with the application are under
> CVS. This also eases installation.
Yup...and development.
> The disadvantages:
>
> - CVS does not handle binaries very well.
This will eventually become a non-issue as tools like Subversion come into
play because it can do binary diff's.
Also, CVS handles binaries fine, the problem is that it takes up disk space,
which is a non-issue IMHO.
> - Increased checkout overhead as the binary files need to be retrieved from
> the network through the CVS pserver.
They need to be downloaded anyway. The overhead is the duplication of
binaries.
> - The binary file under CVS control might interact with other binaries that
> the user has. For example, if the user has x.jar on her classpath and x.jar is
> also under CVS.
That can be controlled with Ant build scripts that override the classpath.
Also, in practice this has been a non-issue now that all the XML xerces
people have their heads on straight.
> Any other advantages disadvantages? How bad is the overhead of manipulating
> binary files with CVS? Thanks for your comments, Ceki
Sam doesn't like it? :-)
The main advantage in my mind is simplicity which far outweighs any
disadvantages. Until there is a system (like my proposed CJAN) that is as
simple to use as checking files out of CVS, then I don't think that we have
any other alternative.
-jon
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