[cvsnt] Opinion: open source-"supported" CVS backup capabilities are very weak

[Arthur Barrett]

Philip,

I think Tony has cleared this up, but I just wanted to add my own 2c.

> The simple CVS repository backup solution using RSYNC works fine on

We recommend Unison since it works on Windows and Unixes (we supply our
own builds to commercial customers from memory).  We do not currently
use or recommend the 'bi-directional' sync capabilities of Unison,
though that may be investigated further in the future.

> LANs or low cost WANs.  However, a CVS TAG operation that affects a
> large group of files will cause retransmission of entire RCS archive
> files.

I believe you must have rsync configured wrong (see Tony's comments), or
you should switch to Unison.

Also TAGs are often not needed anymore if you use changesets (cvs commit
-B nnn) or commit ids.

> The only widely-supported, multi-platform, open source, viable
> solution for low-bandwidth repository backup is Subversion.

Are you talking about 'svnsync'?  It's an odd idea - relaying successful
commits to a second repo, but could be easily added to CVSNT 2.5.04.  In
2.5.04 there is a 'sync' protocol that (currently) has two modes -
either all requests are passed through from the 'local' CVSNT server to
a remote one, or the 'local' CVSNT server processes all 'read' requests
(eg: diff, rlog etc) and the 'write' requests such as 'commit' or 'tag'
are passed to the remote server (and then unison or rsync is used to
mirror the change back again).  Adding a 3rd mode where the local server
processes the 'write' and also passes it to a 'remote' server would be
straightforward - please contact cvsnt-dev if you need pointers on
getting started in the coding.

Regards,


Arthur