How are you using (local) version control and comments?

How are you using (local) version control and comments?

[Mac]

Hello,

I have found a bunch of nifty ideas from this group on how to use
version control in Emacs. But I'm fairly new as a regular user of cvs
and can not get it all to work out into a smooth flow.

Would anyone care to help me by describing your way of working?
I'm particularily interested in how to record changes. 

I have earlier used ediff to view differences while writing the commit
log message.  Now I prefer to use C-x 4 a
('add-change-log-entry-other-window' suggested by kai) to record my
purposes while editing the file.

I'm currently using a Change-Log in each directory, describing changes
in local files, and a "module specific" Change-Log in the top
directory. But when using commit from pcl-cvs on the whole module, I
have to manually copy and edit entries from all Change-logs below.


Since I have a slow connection to my cvs repository (sourceforge) I'm
also thinking about using RCS as a local version control as described
in <info://emacs/Local+Version+Control>. Does this also work under
pcl-cvs?


/mac

Thanks to Reiner Steib for 'rs-insert-current-info-node' 
(<v9bs4r26wv.fsf@marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de>)

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Re: How are you using (local) version control and comments?

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "Mac" == Mac  <oonplnhd02@sneakemail.com> writes:

  Mac> Hello,

  Mac> I have found a bunch of nifty ideas from this group on how to
  Mac> use version control in Emacs. But I'm fairly new as a regular
  Mac> user of cvs and can not get it all to work out into a smooth
  Mac> flow.

  Mac> Would anyone care to help me by describing your way of working?
  Mac> I'm particularily interested in how to record changes.

  Mac> I have earlier used ediff to view differences while writing the
  Mac> commit log message.  Now I prefer to use C-x 4 a
  Mac> ('add-change-log-entry-other-window' suggested by kai) to
  Mac> record my purposes while editing the file.

  Mac> I'm currently using a Change-Log in each directory, describing
  Mac> changes in local files, and a "module specific" Change-Log in
  Mac> the top directory. But when using commit from pcl-cvs on the
  Mac> whole module, I have to manually copy and edit entries from all
  Mac> Change-logs below.

Emacs provides various tools for maintaining change logs. In
particular from vc-update-change-log generates a log for the current
directory. This is good if you want your change log to directly
reflect the version control system. 

Personally I used "cvs2cl.pl" which I am sure google can find for you,
which generates a single change log for a directory structure. 


  Mac> Since I have a slow connection to my cvs repository
  Mac> (sourceforge) I'm also thinking about using RCS as a local
  Mac> version control as described in
  Mac> <info://emacs/Local+Version+Control>. Does this also work under
  Mac> pcl-cvs?

Sadly not, at least not to my knowledge. As the name suggests pcl-cvs
works with CVS. RCS does work with VC though, so emacs will still be
aware of the status of files, and you can check in and so forth. But
you won't get the full directory functionality. 

Of course CVS can work on a local machine as well, through the local
file system. This is very easy to set up, and saves messing around
with pserver. It goes something like....


mkdir ~/cvs-repository
cd ~/cvs-repository
cvs init

and then cvs -d ~/cvs-repository co

or whatever cvs command you want to use. The only reason that I use
RCS is because the version files go with the work files, which is
handy if you want to access version information later, at home for
instance. 

Cheers

Phil

Re: How are you using (local) version control and comments?

[Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>]

> I'm currently using a Change-Log in each directory, describing changes
> in local files, and a "module specific" Change-Log in the top
> directory. But when using commit from pcl-cvs on the whole module, I
> have to manually copy and edit entries from all Change-logs below.

Sounds like a bug (or lack of feature ;-) in PCL-CVS.  I'll see if I
can fix it.  Thanks for mentioning it.

I'd recommend you try to setup your ChangeLog files such that
it happens very rarely that a single commit spans changes recorded
in several ChanegLog files.  This way you won't suffer from the above
problem.

> Since I have a slow connection to my cvs repository (sourceforge) I'm
> also thinking about using RCS as a local version control as described
> in <info://emacs/Local+Version+Control>. Does this also work under
> pcl-cvs?

PCL-CVS doesn't know anything about RCS, so it won't mind but it won't
do anything useful with it.  I used such a setup in the past and actually
liked it: instead of switching backend in VC with `C-x v b', I just let
VC do all the RCS commands and used PCL-CVS to do the CVS stuff.


        Stefan

Re: How are you using (local) version control and comments?

[Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>]

>> I'm currently using a Change-Log in each directory, describing changes
>> in local files, and a "module specific" Change-Log in the top
>> directory. But when using commit from pcl-cvs on the whole module, I
>> have to manually copy and edit entries from all Change-logs below.
> Sounds like a bug (or lack of feature ;-) in PCL-CVS.  I'll see if I
> can fix it.  Thanks for mentioning it.

Actually, it seems to work fine, so I guess I misunderstood your problem.
Could you describe it some more ?


        Stefan

Re: How are you using (local) version control and comments?

[Kai Großjohann]

"Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>" <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> writes:

>> I'm currently using a Change-Log in each directory, describing changes
>> in local files, and a "module specific" Change-Log in the top
>> directory. But when using commit from pcl-cvs on the whole module, I
>> have to manually copy and edit entries from all Change-logs below.
>
> Sounds like a bug (or lack of feature ;-) in PCL-CVS.  I'll see if I
> can fix it.  Thanks for mentioning it.

It works for me.  There is a small problem: 

Suppose you have a ChangeLog file with one entry for lisp/foo.el and
an entry for texi/foo.texi.  Then you commit.  The commit message
with say lisp/foo.el and texi/foo.texi which clearly identifies the
files.

Now consider another situation where you write an entry in
lisp/ChangeLog for lisp/foo.el and an entry in texi/ChangeLog for
texi/foo.texi, then commit.  Then the commit message will say foo.el
and foo.texi instead of lisp/foo.el and texi/foo.texi.

I consider this behavior to be a cosmetic problem at worst.  It
doesn't bother me at all.

kai
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Re: How are you using (local) version control and comments?

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "Stefan" == "Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>" <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> writes:

  >> Since I have a slow connection to my cvs repository (sourceforge)
  >> I'm also thinking about using RCS as a local version control as
  >> described in <info://emacs/Local+Version+Control>. Does this also
  >> work under pcl-cvs?

  Stefan> PCL-CVS doesn't know anything about RCS, so it won't mind
  Stefan> but it won't do anything useful with it.  I used such a
  Stefan> setup in the past and actually liked it: instead of
  Stefan> switching backend in VC with `C-x v b', I just let VC do all
  Stefan> the RCS commands and used PCL-CVS to do the CVS stuff.

I had this plan at one stage, to re-implement the "backup-dir" kind of
functionality using RCS, but moving the RCS directory out of the way,
and hiding it. So every time you saved a file it would be
automatically "checked in" (without a checkin log). This would be a
great way of implementing a space efficient mechanism for doing backup
files. 

Add in some kind of garbage collection for removing hopelessly old
logs (where the original file had been deleted for instance), and
something else for pruning the RCS file (to 50 or so revisions). 

I guess you were using two back ends for something similar
functionality wise. 

Anyway I never got around to implementing it, and I doubt that it will
happen soon. I just wanted to share this thought with you....

Cheers

Phil

Re: How are you using (local) version control and comments?

[Mac]

En dag, närmare bestämt 2002-11-19, plitade Stefan Monnier ner:

>>> I'm currently using a Change-Log in each directory, describing
>>> changes in local files, and a "module specific" Change-Log in the
>>> top directory. But when using commit from pcl-cvs on the whole
>>> module, I have to manually copy and edit entries from all
>>> Change-logs below.
>> Sounds like a bug (or lack of feature ;-) in PCL-CVS.  I'll see if
>> I can fix it.  Thanks for mentioning it.
> 
> Actually, it seems to work fine, so I guess I misunderstood your
> problem.  Could you describe it some more ?

Well, kai pointed out to me that it ('C') looked at today's date, I
was unaware of that. So it does work as it is supposed to.

Since I don't want to do commit files that are in a "dirty" state, is
there a way to catch all ChangeLog entries since last commit? 

<feature request> I would like to do a
'cvs-mode-add-change-log-entry-hier-snarf-change-logs-other-window'
i.e. add a ChangeLog entry in the ChangeLog of the current directory
by recursing all other ChangeLog files, just like 'C' does on
commit. This I could hapilly do manually every day. </feature request>

Thanks
  Mac

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