Hello all, Here is an update on the CVS BOF that OpenAvenue hosted recently at the O'Reilly OpenSource conference in Monterey. I thought it might interest the group, so I'm posting it here for your perusal. Should you care to see it in it's pretty HTML version, you can find it here: http://vox.openave.com/news/cvsbof.html Thanks to everyone who attended, your feedback and contributions really made the BOF a worthwhile experience. Yarry Gonzalez OpenAvenue Community Relations <article> CVS birds of a feather report By Bob Arnson In a standing-room-only session room at the O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention in Monterey, California, OpenAvenue staffers hosted a Birds of a Feather titled "CVS Future Prospects." CVS users and developers joined OpenAvenue's CVS guru Derek Price, CTO Jayson Minard, Community Relations goddess Lorie Hull, and others to discuss CVS, why we all use it, what we want from it in the future, and how we can best go about making it happen. Ask not what your CVS can do for you... CVS is clearly the most popular version control system in the open source world. Open source developers aren't exactly known for their shyness and naturally, a Birds of a Feather session like this encourages users to bring out their favorite bugs, pet peeves, and wishlist items. There was no shortage of ideas for further CVS development, including: Better admin support for managing repositories One-step file renaming that retains file history The ability to force checkouts Better security for pserver Better support -- diffs and merging -- for binary files, especially common file types Support for private branches so as not to litter a shared repository with intermediate checkins Atomic commits that all succeed or fail so the repository is always in a consistent state More configuration management features, like build automation Many suggestions weren't for ways to improve the CVS code itself but for more and better documentation, including a "best practices" document and more tips and tricks on running CVS and managing repositories. A mailing-list archive (better than the one at eGroups) would also be appreciated. ...but what you can do for your CVS When asked who contributed to CVS -- that is, hacked on the CVS code itself -- few hands went up. When asked why so few users contributed to CVS, the answers were revealing. Most users felt that CVS is too big and monolithic to easily contribute simple fixes. Several people said that if CVS were more modular, it would be easier to hack without fear that simple changes would break other code. Along the same request for modularity, one person suggested a hook API to make it easier to write customized handlers for particular files or certain CVS commands. It was said that CVS didn't feel like a normal, active open-source project and that more work needed to be done to encourage hacking, such as: A "Hacker's Guide to CVS" -- a roadmap to the code that would make it easier to learn how to hack CVS More details on the CVS Development Web page Better test suites, with more test cases and test documentation A dynamic wishlist and bug-tracking system A way to contribute "unofficial" scripts and add-ons Make it so The good news is that the CVS community is large and seems to like CVS -- so what can OpenAvenue do to make it easier for the community to contribute to an essential part of their toolset? Stay tuned to CVShome.org for details! </article>
