[ On Friday, August 4, 2000 at 10:25:00 (-0700), Glew, Andy wrote: ]
> Subject: RE: CVS'ing home directory files; CVS in place
>
> > If you just use 'su' properly and plain old SCCS or RCS in the actual
> > directories where you modify configuration files then you'll have good
> > solid CM without the ability to "loose" changes. This is especially
> > easy and even trivial if you use a wrapper script on your editor that
> > does all the check-outs and commits, or if you use Emacs where such
> > ability is directly integrated and immediately available.
> >
> > I.e. CVS is almost always the wrong tool for systems administration.
>
> I don't understand where CVS is weaker than plain old SCCS or RCS
> in this regard.
One word: Concurrency. It's almost necessary for developers these days,
but it can be an absolutely nightmare for good CM practices in systems
administration.
> Oh, sure: if you do a blind update you may import changes to machine1
> that are meant for machine2 and don't work on machine1. But, the same
> thing happens if you have symlink shared RCS or SCCS directories.
That would be wrong too.
> Moral: update/merge is not always the right thing to do
> - certainly not for system config files (and not for some
> other source code files in my experience, although it works well
> in some situations.).
CVS is not a "build" system -- it should never be used to update live
configuration files directly in the first place!
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Secrets of the Weird <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
