Python, licenses and CVS

[Brent Stroh]

Hans Nowak <wurmy at earthlink.net> wrote:

>There's such a thing
>as WinCVS, but the whole process strikes me as clumsy... checking
>in and out and committing every time something changes... what is
>the point of this? 

As someone who has spent some time in software configuration management,
let me suggest that it might seem less clumsy if you rework your definition
of when to commit.

If you're in the middle of ongoing development, you don't need to commit
after every line of code.  You only need to commit when you feel it's a
good idea to have a copy of a particular stage of development.

Once you release this code to testers, the universe, whatever, you'll want
to be sure you check in (and tag) each release level, to be sure you know
what folks will be asking questions about.

Bottom line:  You only need to commit what you need to get back to.  

On projects with multiple developers, that changes a bit, but I've found my
personal CVS repository for all of my tools and toys to be invaluable.

>What happens if you forget a step? Does it have
>substantial benefits over versioning your files by hand, aside from
>having a repository through which you can undo changes?

Letting the tool do versioning eliminates a lot of housekeeping and wasted
disk space.  It also removes a potential source of human error.  IMO.