Re: CVS, Linus, and us

David Holland (dholland@hcs.harvard.edu)
Fri, 23 Feb 1996 15:22:36 -0500 (EST)

> How about this: One person creates and exports an official CVS tree that
> development is *not* performed on. The tree is strictly for the purpose
> of being able to apply patches between different releases.
>
> [...]
>
> This would also allow people to be able to maintain their own local patches
> that should not be applied to the public sources, without having to unpatch
> update and repatch (and try to figure out which hunks failed and why).

Um. CVS isn't magic. If patching fails, chances are CVS will too - so
you have at least as much work, and if CVS fails silently you have a
lot *more* work trying to figure out why nothing works any more.

CVS has certain advantages, but I don't see there being a strong case
for it. If it leads to even one significant bug due to a failed merge,
it should not be used.

-- 
   - David A. Holland          | Number of words in the English language that
     dholland@hcs.harvard.edu  | exist because of typos or misreadings: 381