[ On Friday, February 18, 2000 at 16:52:48 (-0500), Noel L Yap wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: removing the need for "cvs add file" to contact the server....
>
> What I'm getting at is that "cvs add dir" should create CVS admin subdirectories
> whether or not the hierarchy is empty. "cvs add dir" shouldn't differentiate
> between empty (including those that contain only ignored files) and non-empty
> hierarchies. You still haven't shown how it can be dangerous to do so. After
> all, this is only occurring within the local directories right?
It's obviously not dangerous to always create the administrative files
in every directory "cvs add" recurses into. However there are some
potentially major (and long-term!) optimisations to be gained by only
creating them when necessary. Since it is not necessary to create
administrative files in a directory when no other files are added there
they should not be created.
> I also contend that "cvs ci" will create those newly added directories into the
> repository whether or not they are empty hierarchies. Again, you haven't shown
> how this is dangerous. OTOH, I've shown an example where this could be used
> wisely by a site's processes (ie so that the newly added directories are owned
> by the cvs admin).
There is definite danger in creating unnecessary empty directories in
the repository. If this were not the case then there wouldn't have been
a major discussion recently about why CVS should be more careful about
letting people create arbitrary directories in the repository.
There are also similar major performance headaches if garbage
directories are created in the repository unnecessarily.
Given the current design of CVS there can be *NO* reasonable argument
for creating empty directories in the repository and leaving them there.
Your so-called argument was based on a false understanding of the way
CVS controls access to the repository. (Perhaps this strange desire you
have for some weird alternate access control mechanism is also skewing
your other arguments too! :-)
On the other hand I would support the automatic pruning of empty
directories from the repository just as they must be pruned from the
local working directories! ;-)
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Secrets of the Weird <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
