Re: pcvs branch and merge functions

[Arik Mitschang]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for taking a look, and the comments.

> - why cvs-branch-tag-branch-postfix?  I mean if I name the branch "foo",
>   I don't want Emacs to rename it to "foo-BRANCH", do I?

I think it depends. We very likely want to name the branch point as
"BASE" or something, and some like to use "MERGE" for the merge
result. I use both so I then like to be annoyingly explicit and say
"BRANCH". This can of course be defaulted to nil if most do not like
that behavior.

> - ("\C-m" .    cvs-mode-merge) binds it to RET (since it's the same as
>   ^M), which is already used for something else.

ah yes, perhaps they could be bound to \C-c\C-m and \C-c\C-b for merge
and branch respectively? (or not at all, these are probably not the
most regular commands)

> - I wouldn't bother supporting the case where
>   cvs-branch-tag-base-postfix is nil.

Because we should never branch in CVS without tagging the base? (I
agree, but it doesn't seem to harm since it is a custom variable
anyway. Might just want to warn about the danger of a nil setting in
the description)

> - cvs-mode-merge should provide completion of branch names.
>   Otherwise you might as well use C-u M-x cvs-mode-update and type
>   the -j yourself.

True, a little more typing but I see your point.

> - I think
> 
>     (if (and (not (equal branch-tag merge-tag))
>            (not (null cvs-branch-tag-merge-postfix)))
>       (cvs-mode-run "update" (list "-j" branch-tag) fis)
>       (cvs-mode-run "update" (list "-j" branch-tag) fis))
> 
>   is equivalent to
> 
>     (cvs-mode-run "update" (list "-j" branch-tag) fis))

Indeed so, that must be leftover from attempt at merge tagging, but
that of course was the totally wrong place for that.

>   BTW.  Maybe an even better option would be to provide completion after
>   "-j" and "-r" when you do c-x M-x cvs-mode-update.

You mean than the cvs-mode-merge/branch functions all-together? I
think it's nice even if a little redundant to have the merge function
just in case one is having trouble which switch to use. For the branch
function this wouldn't be sufficient since we need several operations
including tagging, which I can never remember the switches/order for,
but cvs-mode-branch is quite obvious.

> - You might be able to move the -MERGE tag automatically by creating
>   (at the end of cvs-mode-merge) a special file in the CVS admin dir
>   which would hold some info about the result of the merge, and then in
>   cvs-mode-commit you can check this file to see if the commit is
>   committing the result of the merge or something else.  Maybe the
>   simplest way is an empty file, and upon commit you simply ask the user
>   (if the file is present) if he's committing that merge.

I will mess around with this when I get the chance. 

Thanks again. I will post a diff with the new version when I get to
these updates and have a working version.

~Arik