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A list of annoying CVS habits

Rob Sanheim posted today with a humourous list of annoying CVS habits, my personal favourite is bullet point 3:

Or, commit sweeping changes to 45 files all with the same comment: “changed the foo baz system”.

I have a few more to add that I can think of at the moment:

* Create a tag for the current software release that bears no resemblance to any tags that have existed for previous releases.

* Commit any changed files but forget to add & commit any new files, then go on vacation, leaving your machine switched off with an unknown root password.

* Commit compiled Java class files so that when you run cvs diff you get a very colourful output.

Got anymore to add?

BTW, a small but incredibly useful book to have is O'Reilly's CVS Pocket Reference. It's cheap but full of detail which has saved me on a number of occasions when I'm asked to fix some obscure CVS issue.

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Comments

Rob Baillie said…
I especially like it when you work in a team that never had a naming convention for files, then decides to impose one. As each file changes name you loose an easy way of grabbing the history for that file.

Also, a developer removing a file that you were changing meaning that the only way to resolve the conflict (file does not exist in repository) is to open the CVS management files and delete lines.

Can we now have an entry on things you don't like about what people do with VSS, closely followed by the same on PVCS?

;-)
Andrew Beacock said…
Maybe we should start an SVN one, let's get Mike Mason on board, I'm sure he's got quite a few stories!