Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: tag'ged (branched) and cacherev'ed archive dependency?

[Miles Bader]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2004 at 01:19:40PM -0300, Rodrigo Bernardo Pimentel wrote:
> > You could mirror it, either fully or partially, or you could even just
> > make a new empty archive, and use `cp' to copy in the branches you want
> > ... :-) Arch's archive format is quite easy to manage with normal unix
> > tools...
> 
>         If I understood it correctly, none of these let me grab project from
> archive1 and move to archive2 (which already existed, with other projects
> in it). At most, I'd be able to create a new archive, containing the
> project.
> 
> What I'm looking for is a "tla migrate archive1/project archive2/[project2]" 

You can copy a branch directory verbatim into a new archive, and it may `sort
of' work, but the problem is all the _references_ to the old archive name:
inside every log file, it says `Archive: archive1' (though AFAIK no one uses
that data for anything), and more importantly, all CONTINUATION tags will
refer to archive1 (and note that this is a problem not just in the affected
project, but in descendant projects tagged from archive1/project -- which may
not all be under your control).  You're effectly trying to change history,
and that means a _lot_ of bookkeeping.

You can sort of do this (I've written scripts that do much of the work), but
it doesn't seem worth it in most cases, especially given the open-ended
problem of fixing all references from forked projects.  If you're concerned
about maintaining an old archive for historical reasons, it seems far simpler
to just keep a real copy of the old archive, possibly pruned to include only
what you consider important.

-Miles
-- 
Is it true that nothing can be known?  If so how do we know this?  -Woody Allen