RCS and Emacs, between machines.

[Phillip Lord <p.lord@russet.org.uk>]

I have a problem with RCS, within emacs. 

For some kinds of work, like writing papers, I would like to use
versioning to, well, store versions. But I tend to write a reasonable
amount at home, as well as at work. I do this by sticking all the
files onto a floppy and taking them home. I'd like to do this with the
versioning files as well. 

So RCS seemed like the obvious choice. It keeps its version files in
the same directory (or a sub-directory) so all the files would be
there on the floppy. 

However this fails, because of RCS's locking model. I have a different
user name at home, than I do at work. So I get lots of warning about
stealing locks. I don't care about locking as I am the only user
around. All I want to do is periodically check in and add version
comments, and of course be able to retrieve these versions at a
later date. 

I thought about using CVS instead, which would solve this
problem. However there you need two subdirectories...one called "CVS"
which cvs creates. And another to hold the repository (connecting to a
remote repository is really not an option). Also importing files into
the repository is a bit of a faf, as you can't do it in place...you
have to import some files, then check out a work copy, etc etc. This
is a pity because I am deeply addicted to pcl-cvs, which is excellent.

I guess that the end solution is, for each paper, create a new
directory. Then create a repository in it with one module (and no
files). Then check this empty module into the same directory as the
repository, and work from there. Which all seems like a lot of
effort. It also fails because CVS uses full qualified paths in its
Repository file, which, of course, includes my login name.

Hmmm. All a bit of a mess really. 

Anyone else do similar things? Anyone got a good solution?

Cheers

Phil