Re: which version control supports file locking and who has it locked

Johan:

On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 2:30 PM, Johan Corveleyn <jcorvel_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 5:29 PM, Doug Robinson
> <doug.robinson_at_wandisco.com> wrote:
> >
> > Johan:
> >
> > The "svn lock" enables all people considering working with a file to
> > be able to see who currently has the file locked. But they cannot see
> > anyone who is working on the file but does not own the lock.
> >
> > Reading the "p4 edit" man page:
> >
> > https://www.perforce.com/perforce/r16.1/manuals/cmdref/p4_edit.html
> >
> > we see that the expected use is "p4 edit; <edit file>; p4 submit" and
> that
> > "p4 edit" updates the Perforce database to mark the file as being edited
> > by that account in that workspace. That means that any other Perforce
> > user can see *all* of the other accounts working on that file (this is
> *not*
> > the same as a lock) by issuing the "p4 opened -a file" command.
> >
> > The ClearCase Dynamic View situation is pretty much the same as what
> > I have described above for Perforce.
>
> Okay, so IIUC with "p4 edit" multiple users can start editing the file
> (Alice, John and Jim), and they can all indicate concurrently that
> they're editing the file, and other users can see that Alice, John and
> Jim all have the file opened for editing. Interesting, but I fail to
> see how that helps with non-mergeable files, where you want to lock it
> out for one person to work on it at the same time.
>

Or they can check to see who's editing it before checking it out.

> Remember the question from the OP: "in Tortoise SVN, there is no
> method of locking a file until it has been changed .
> or knowing who is actually working on a file. is this feature
> available on any other version control , GIT , CVS ?"
>

There are 2 parts to that question:
1. no method of locking
2. no way to see who's actually working on the file

The former is just wrong: SVN has locking and TortoiseSVN definitely
has that implemented.

> He seems to be asking for locks, i.e. one developer locks it until he
> has completed his change.
>

I just didn't assume that the OP only was talking about locking.
If they were then the 2nd comment is strange, but, well, ok. Done.

Apart from that: AFAICS the remark "But they cannot see anyone who is
> working on the file but does not own the lock" applies to all systems
> under discussion. With Perforce, I'm guessing that I can just as well
> start editing the file with some text editor, outside of p4's
> knowledge, right? That's just the same as starting to edit an
> svn:needs-lock file without taking the svn lock (note that an
> "svn:needs-lock file" is by default read-only on the filesystem in an
> svn working copy, so you have to explicitly make it writeable).
>

I'm not sure about Perforce's implementation. However, just for
comparison: with ClearCase Dynamic Views you can *not* edit the file
without a checkout. The Dynamic View implementation is via an actual
OS file system so you can't beat it. And everyone can see that checkout.

Doug

>
> --
> Johan
>

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