[cvsnt] No need to tag the entire repository and waste all that spacetime

[keith d. zimmerman]

Victor A. Wagner Jr. wrote:
> Although I can think of no  real reason to tag the entire repository, it 
> seems to me that in addition to taking a fair amount of time, it's going 
> to add a fair amount of space to the repository.
> 
> It seems to me that the effect people would be looking for is to restore 
> some sandbox to the state of the entire repository at some unlikely time 
> in the future (or are there people who keep only _one_ project per 
> repository?).

well, our repository contains ~50 .dlls that make up a single windows 
program, yes.....  Plus a few odd extra projects here and there, but the 
bulk of it is a single project

> Since all a tag does is create a synonym (in _each_ file (the space part 
> of the spacetime mentioned in the subject)) for some (generally the 
> current) revision, it's clear that any process that's going to "mark" 
> each file will take significant time.
> 
> I suspect that administrators would really prefer a way to mark the 
> repository as it is "right now".
> 
> That being the case, why not simply record the date/time with the "name" 
> you want to give to the 'tag' someplace, and timestamp it.  Last I 
> checked, one could do checkouts and updates using a datetime as an 
> argument.  Yes it would be a two step process to "get" all the relevant 
> files from the repository, but the "tagging" would take the time of 
> doing a commit on a single file (if you put your "tag name" in the file 
> before committing it.
> 
> Alternatively, in case you're _really, really_ in love with tags, you 
> could force some file to commit (using the -f option) then rtag _it_.  
> I'd suggest using one of the files that exists in the CVSROOT if you're 
> going to do such a stunt (it likely is changeable only by admins already).
> 
> surely it would be rather easy to put together a small script that will 
> do either the "tagging" or the two steps necessary to update/checkout.

The only problem here is that when a dev is using viewcvs to see what 
version of file A is in version X, or to see the differences between 
version X and version Y he won't see the information he needs....  This 
would all work OK if using the command line, but we aren't.  I suppose I 
*could* mod viewcvs, but.....

thanks,
-kz