Hi list,
I have had to explain this to many people that ought to know better, so I'm more than
happy to perform the routine for an audience that might be forgiven for not realising
this. ;)
>[Noel L Yap] I think the problem any VC system is supposed to solve is to prevent
>multiple people from editing the same file at the same time.
If you are in a situation where there is more than one developer working on the same
code base, you will at some point be facing the situation of more than one of them
doing work on the same (set of) files.
It is important to realise that NO tool can solve this problem. The only foolproof
solution (though not necessarily free from headache) is communication between
developers.
I like CVS because it will at least allow people to do the work, regardless of whether
they run into this problem later. The reality is, that it is not likely to happen in
even the slightest form of organisation. This yields much better results than
disallowing the practice (i.e. using exclusive locking).
Then there is 'cvs update' and the merge process. Again, this is not to be seen as a
magic solution. Having CVS handle your merging for you may be a blessing. It may also
completely ruin the functionality of your program by breaking structure in your source
code. What I'm saying is that CVS helps, but nothing more than that. In the end there
is no possible substitue for a human with an accompanying brain.
The way this fits in with a bit of CVS advocacy (for those of you that have to explain
to your boss why he shouldn't spend 40K on a Rational tool): the same principle
applies to any VC system out there. The difference lies in how much assistance you get
from the tool in solving the problem.
I should add to this that with CVS, coupled with the average UNIX environment, you can
quite easily create wrapper scripts that enforce additional layers of locking, to suit
your business rules.
I did this at my previous company, where anybody could check out, but only a select
few (the Release Management team) could check code in. The checking in was only done
for code that was accompanied by an appropriate token.
TTYL,
Schmolle
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