Hi.
On Sat 2003-06-21 at 14:21:12 -0700, Michael Price wrote:
> --- Shlomi Fish <shlomif@vipe.stud.technion.ac.il> wrote:
> > On Sat, 21 Jun 2003, Robert Pluim wrote:
> > [ Do some work]
> > cvs tag -F LATEST_DEVEL
> > [ Do some work, and have another latest devel ]
> > cvs tag -F LATEST_DEVEL
> >
> > Understood?
>
> Yeah, I understand. However, I feel the need to point out that moving
> tags is EVIL, EVIL, EVIL! Its sad cvs makes it so easy.
IMHO, the real problem is, that it allows to move tags, but doesn't
keep history about it. If you could display a log history for the tag,
it wouldn't be that much of a problem anymore.
> > > Well, you've just destroyed part of your history.
> >
> > Actually I did not. The entire history is kept in the trunk. The tag is
> > just a snapshot of it, which I don't mind updating to the latest one
> > somehow.
>
> Actually you did. When you move a tag you've destroyed history. Period.
Depends on the point of view. For his use-case, he knows before-hand,
he is not (deeply) interested in history.
> This is why moving tags is EVIL.
Only if your main purpose of tagging is to keep history (which, of
course, is *the* main purpose for tagging).
The point is, there is a certain use case, and moving tags in CVS
apparently is the best solution for the use case. At least, it's the
best I have come up with. Same for him, apparantly.
The use case is: I want to mark a moving target. Like, the last
version that was tested to work (yeah, I can compile and run the
testsuite, but don't have the unique, external, expensive hardware it
controls for a real test, so my collegue some hundred miles away
should tag whenever he tested it works).
Yes, he could use unique tag names, but that would mean more than 10
tags on some days. Not really useful. So he moves the tag around. And
we tag "worthy" versions with a unique tag, based on the "moving"
tag. There are other variants of this scheme, so we have about 5-10
moving tags overall.
In other words, it is some kind of communication, some kind of
(mis-)use of the tag system and of course, there are other solutions
(he could write mails instead, or whatever). Maybe there is a *better*
solution I did not see yet (I would be glad to hear), but until I find
it, moving the tag is the most usable for us.
> Most projects I've been on explicitly disallow tag moving.
Yeah. We also have tags which are prohibited from moving. In fact,
almost all. All without a special name part (all "moving" tags contain
the nick of the developer who is allowed to move it). Long story
short: I agree completely with your argument (for historic tags), but
simply claim that there are other reasonable use-cases for tags.
Bye,
Benjamin.
PS: This discussion reminds me a lot of the one on per-file logs with
Subversion. There were overwhelming voices that one "wants" to use
change-sets and it took some time until it got heard there we knew
that and that we wanted changesets with separate per-change *and*
per-file comments, in order to be able to ignore the per-file
remarks for other files while viewing one with svn log.
In other words, please don't let an agenda to get rid of an evil,
let you prevent from seeing other valid uses.
That is not directed to you, personally, Michael. This is not the
first time this happened, and I feeled a certain urge to write
about it.
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Received on Sun Jun 22 04:43:24 2003