Re: tetex-* CVS repository on klecker?
I was counting on Julian to chime in with some good advice, and
I'm glad that some of what I suggested meshed pretty well with
some of his advice. ;-)
The best place to look for information about CVS, I think, is
<http://www.cvshome.org/>, which has the master CVS archive, the
Cederqvist book in various formats, and a FAQ-O-Matic with lots of
answers to both obvious and non-obvious questions.
Also potentially useful is the CVS reference card at
<http://www.refcards.com/>.
I've found tkcvs to be useful for looking around my CVS
directories (but not really doing much to them), and the PCL-CVS
elisp package (whose Debian package is confusingly called
``cvs-pcl'') to be really handy when working within Emacs.
Are there docs somewhere for working with Debian's CVS
repositories? I know they support anonymous pserver access, but
presumably to make changes we need to log in, which means any of
several different methods. Using an ssh-tunnel or ssh-as-rsh
would seem to be the most obscure, and there are some docs for
that on cvshome, but it would be good to know if there's already
some Debian-specific information available.
I'll take a look at cvs-buildpackage -- I have it installed, but
haven't really taken the time to look at it thus far. Having just
jumped through lots of hoops to fix a bunch of C++-standards
violations with one of my packages and making diffs for those
changes, having things in CVS is looking more and more attractive.
As for cvs2cl, I agree that it can definitely include a bit too
much detail. But its output would need some degree of massaging
before it was suitable for including in debian/changelog anyway,
so using it might not be that bad. That's dependent on the level
of detail, though, as a bunch of short entries like ``Doc fixes'',
``Tweaked variable names'', and ``Changed configuration info''
isn't necessarily going add up to ``Fixed script problem resulting
in empty directories (closes: #xxx)'' for someone other than the
person doing the changes.
Maybe the best thing to do would be to have people add brief but
meaningful summaries of what they did to the debian/changelog
(e.g., ``Fixed directory permission problem (closes: #xxxx)'') and
let the specific details remain in the cvs2cl changelog (e.g.,
``file.pl: Modified to read directory permissions before changing
them; file.1: Documented change in manpage; file.cfg: Changed
configuration details'', etc.). We could then either start
including cvs2cl changelogs in the doc directory or just make a
blanket statement that people could check the CVS logs if they
wanted more detail than we've provided in debian/changelog.
We might also want to consider mandating some particular format
for changelog entries, such as <http://www.gnu.org/standards.html#SEC40>.
(I suspect that a fair bit of that is automatic when using CVS,
though).
CMC
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Behind the counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space,
a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear.
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
C.M. Connelly c@eskimo.com SHC, DS
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
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