Re: adding on branch

Stefan Monnier <monnier+gnu.cvs.bug/news/@rum.cs.yale.edu> writes:

> I think the first problem is to get things working as I think they
> should.

It makes no sense to me to alter the behavior of cvs unless we
understand the implications of the change and agree that it is in the
right direction and does not break existing user expectations.

Other folks have mentioned it before. cvs development needs a vision and
a goal. Well, you have the start of a short term goal. Is it so much to
ask that we have a vision of how that short term goal impacts the general
operation of cvs?

> The merging case comes afterwards.  

Not really.

I would rather have a design and work to implement the change than go at
a change in an ad hoc manner.

If you have patches that already do everything you need, feel free to
share them.

> And honestly, CVS is not good at finding the ancestor on its own
> anyway, so it wouldn't be the first time that the ancestor needs to be
> given explicitly in order to get a good merge.

Hmmm... if you say so then you probably have explicit examples in mind,
but it actually it seems to work for me. Of course, it does not keep a
good 'memory' of previous merge operations, but that is a bit outside of
the current problem statement.

> > Sure. Actually, there has been some talk of just removing the Attic
> > optimization for the mainline. It was needed before cvs was taught about
> > the dead state, but it is not really needed these days.
> 
> Whatever works...  The main question is: do you now agree that the current
> behavior is conceptually wrong (regarding the timing-sensitivity for steps
> 2 and 3 of my example) ?

I am willing to entertain the idea that a change in behavior could be
beneficial to users of cvs. I want to make sure that the change will
not have any negative impact on existing users.

So, what are the things that need to change in how cvs does its import
operation to keep the current way in which the vendor branch is treated
with regard to subsequent imports and what happens when a local change
is made and still give you the ability to have your order independent
view of the file?

        -- Mark