Noel L Yap writes:
>
> System-wide preferences would have to exist on the same machine as the binary.
> So now, instead of "cvs diff" working differently from one directory to another,
> it would work differently depending on which server the repository resides. It
> would also mean that, if one were to move the repository, the behaviour of
> commands would change.
No, no, no, no, no. System-wide preferences would exist on the same
machine as the *client* binary, not the server! As things currently
stand, here's no reason I can see for a server to ever read a
preferences file (i.e., the -f global option should be assumed for any
server command, although the existing structure of the code may make
that difficult, I haven't really looked to see).
> As for commands working differently from one directory to another. The original
> post regarded a per-repo CVSROOT/cvsrc file. I did mention possibly having
> per-module .cvsrc files, but I don't consider it necessary and, I haven't
> thought too much about it to deem it not dangerous.
My point is that, for someone who works with multiple repositories,
changing from one directory to another could change repositories and it
would be very surprising for CVS commands to suddenly change their
behavior just because of changing directories.
You guys are once again trying to add warts to CVS to solve a problem
that it was never intended to solve. If you have a bunch of users on a
single machine, then having a machine-wide default preferences file (ala
/etc/profile) would be a good solution. If you have a bunch of users,
each with their own machine, then that wouldn't help much. Perhaps the
best solution to this problem would be to have "cvs" be a script that
checks for ~/.cvsrc and if it doesn't exist, copy a default one into
place for the user, then run the real cvs.
One more time: ~/.cvsrc contains *user* preferences that have nothing
whatsoever to do with which repository the user is accessing (with the
possible exception of cvs -z). They most definitely do *not* belong in
the repository.
-Larry Jones
Whatever it is, it's driving me crazy! -- Calvin
