Re: am files in CVS and MAINTAINER_MODE

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006, Bob Rossi wrote:
> Anyways, with all that the auto tools provide, this is the single most
> frustrating problem that I have. I wish there was an elegant solution
> with CVS to store the generated files. Is there?

While timestamps could certainly be an issue, they have not been much 
of an issue for projects I work on.  Timestamps are usually not a 
problem as long as commits are comprehensive and are not done in a 
piecemeal fashion.  A much larger issue is if developers do not use 
identical autotool versions.  If autotool versions are not identical, 
or there is any variation at all, then huge differences are generated 
in the configure script (e.g. debug line numbers) and there are 
changes in the Makefile.in files.  This results in thrashing, and 
uncertainty as to whether the versions in the version control system 
are the best/correct ones.  This particular problem is not solved by 
any version control system I am aware of.

To me, lack of directory versioning is a much bigger problem with CVS 
than its timestamp uncertainty.  CVS does produce original timestamps 
as long as files are not merged.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/