This is more or less a question about the workings of the CVS archive. I am assuming a tag/label is a set of file pointers. So, when you ask for all the files withing a certain tag/label, it just traverses these pointers. If this is not how CVS works internally, please correct me and inform me how it uses the tag/label meta-data to reconstruct a view from a label/tag. But, my question is still assuming the file pointer scenario.
Suppose you have a file f with versions f_0, f_1, f_2, . . . , f_n. Where f_0 was the first version of the file and f_n is the current version. There are two naive ways of doing archiving: 1) Strict archive. At time t=n+1, the archive contains f_0, f_1, f_2, . . . , f_n and the current version is f_(n+1). i.e. the archive is strictly an archive and only contains the older versions. 2) Current archive. At time t=n+1, the archive contains f_0, f_1, . . . , f_n, f_(n+1). i.e. the archive contains every version of the file including the current version. But, why would you include a copy of the current version? Good question, my dear reader. Consider when a tag/label is made on the current version of the file. Case 2 is easy. It will simply point to the file f_(n+1) in the archive which will (hopefully) never change. However, in case 1, the tag will point to f_(n+1) which is the working copy. If the user changes this, then f_(n+1) will move to the archive. This file, in turn, must get each label it is associated with and tell that label/tag to point to the file f_(n+1) in the archive. Of course, it could always do a hybrid (i.e. do case 1, but if tagging a current version, copy to archive, point to archive). However, the provided hybrid would have to know not to duplicate the current version in the archive (i.e. f_n is working version, it is tagged and copied to archive version f_n, then working copy f_n is modified to f_(n+1) but f_n should not be copied to archive). So, if you have read through this all and understand it all, please provide your comments whether they be CVS based or personal opinions. I am working on a system which needs to do versioning and assume the CVS community has thought much longer on this problem than I. dave _______________________________________________ Info-cvs mailing list Info-cvs@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-cvs
