[cvsnt] Re: Question about how CVS works...

[Oliver Giesen]

Harrison, Andrew wrote:

> This might seem a silly question to some, but I just want to get a clearer
> understanding of how CVS all hangs together. What I want to know is how much
> of the work is done in the CVS server, and how much is done in the CVS
> client? I know that the front-ends (eg WinCVS) are little more than a GUI,
> but I wasn't sure if the CVS client that they use does any of the work
> (merging etc) or if pretty much everything is handled server side. Can
> anyone enlighten me please?

I'd be interested in a detailed answer to this as well. I am still 
occasionally surprised when I learn that yet another functionality I 
have known about for years is, contrary to my expectations, entirely or 
at least mostly implemented at the server indeed.
In the case of merging however I am pretty sure that it's ultimately 
done on the client side, i.e. I don't think the client is first sending 
the local files to the server in order to let it merge them and then 
send the results back...


> If the client does do more than interface with the server, does this mean I
> need to upgrade the clients on all the users machines when I upgrade the
> server?

Not necessarily. Some server-features do indeed require client-support 
(often simply by means of recognizing certain commandline options and 
allowing them to be passed on to the server instead of bailing out 
because of an invalid option) but if you don't use those features 
there's usually no problem using a client that doesn't support them 
(except when the server introduces new required options for old commands 
as has happened in the case of the (r)tag -B option). Most of the time 
the server handles "less-capable" clients very gracefully, e.g. if your 
client doesn't store mergepoints locally, then the server will simply 
not try to use them (it obviously cannot) and fall back to the old 
scheme of implying the branchpoint for merges instead.

Cheers,

-- 
Oliver
----	------------------
JID:	ogiesen at jabber.org
ICQ:	18777742	(http://wwp.icq.com/18777742)