Re: `smoothing_enabled' undeclared

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> writes:
>  > Every branch has a "head".  The main branch is called "the trunk".
>
> HEAD is a tag.  Is it a tag for the head of the trunk or the head of the
> branch which the working directory is in?

The CVS docs are maddeningly vague about this...

I thought it was the latter, but I just did a bit of testing, and the
result of using -rHEAD is different depending on which command you use.

E.g., if, in a working directory where everything has the sticky tag
"emacs-unicode-2" (i.e., that's the current branch), then if I test on
the file "src/xfaces.c", which is different in the trunk and on the
branch, the following commands yield these results:

   * "cvs diff -rHEAD src/xfaces.c" produces no output -- so presumably
     it's diffing against the latest revision of _the current branch_.

   * "cvs update -rHEAD src/xfaces.c" _changes_ the sticky tag from the
     file to be "HEAD", and updates it to be the latest revision on _the trunk_.

I don't know if I'm missing something, but this seems like pretty dumb
behavior... no wonder people are confused about what HEAD means.

[I suppose the reason it is this way is that they simply didn't
special-case HEAD in places where they really should have, so the result
is probably internally consistent but confusing for users...]

So I think that you shouldn't use "-rHEAD" with any command that would
set the sticky tag when given a real branch tag name, but it should be
OK when used with commands like diff.

-Miles
-- 
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