Hi Peter, What version client, and what version of server? CVS 1.12 and CVSNT 2.5/2.8 have commands that older releases like CVS 1.10 do not.
Let me ask a fundamental question: why? I ask this because I've often seen complex technical questions disguise a perfectly simple requirement that is solved a different way by CVS. Software that detects changes in the repository, and advises users of this is quite common. And commonly done poorly. eg: Eclipse 'syncronise' and Oracle JDeveloper. At least in the case or Oracle, the JDeveloper team did contact us at some point to ask suggestions of how to do it 'better'. And I applaud you too for asking. Technically my answer is that commitlog is the way to achieve this. ie: when the server receives a change, it can trigger some event (typically sending an e-mail) and client apps can use that information, or query that information to get the result. Typically this answer is not well liked. Developers of GUIs often want something like what you are asking for, i.e.: oh just run command xyz and it'll tell you.... So here are some more technical thoughts: 1. you could use a variation of 'cvs log' to find all changes between two points in time - the time your sandbox was last updated and the current time. 2. you could use 'cvs rls' to get a listing of a directory and compare it to your own directory. 3. try to avoid complex 'cvs -n ' cases - or at least test them thoroughly. I mostly work on CVSNT (forked from CVS several years ago to support additional features), and I know that in many cases cvsnt 'cvs -n' does not do what it is advertised to do. In fact we only 'support' a couple of specific cases of 'cvs -n up' since we consider it an 'outdated/deprecated' way to 'list modules'. After 7 years and about 7 million downloads we've only ever had 1 person notice - and they were a CVS developer (GUI) not a 'person using CVS'. My point? 'cvs -n' is not widely used and therefore probably not widely tested. Regards, Arthur Barrett -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] on behalf of Peter Toft Sent: Thu 07/07/2011 7:45 AM To: Info cvs Cc: Subject: How to detect new CVS dirs Hi all I have a small brain-teaser for the CVS-gurus.... Assume that I "pto" have a CVS module checked out, and the user "donald" have the same module checked out - both on HEAD version. Then "donald" adds two dirs (Donald/ + Scrooge/) and one file (Scrooge/McDuck) mkdir Donald mkdir Scrooge echo "money" > Scrooge/McDuck cvs add Donald Scrooge cvs commit Donald Scrooge cvs add Scrooge/McDuck cvs commit -m "Money makes the world go around" Scrooge/McDuck My question to you is how can "pto" detect what "donald" did - WITHOUT changing the files locally. Part of the question is solved by running cvs -q -n update -AdP However now it gets a bit more blurry.... I will see the directories "Donald" and "Scrooge" in my stderr output cvs update: New directory `Donald' -- ignored cvs update: New directory `Scrooge' -- ignored well - I kinda dislike this, since a real "cvs update -AdP will prune the empty "Donald" away i.e. I cannot see why "cvs -q -n update -AdP" should show this. Comments on this? The other issue is that I cannot see the file "Scrooge/McDuck" with my "cvs -q -n update -AdP". Clues to get that information - again without actually modifying the local files of me? Comments? I can solve this by first doing an actual update of the two dirs, and see what I get - and then remove the two dirs, but I would like to solve this with that strategy. Best Peter Toft -- Peter Toft, PhD http://petertoft.dk
