From: john@pcad.UUCP (John Grow)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.unix.admin
Subject: RCVS and multiple software development sites (SUMMARY)
Keywords: CVS, RCVS, version control
Date: 21 Jul 92 18:35:45 GMT
Followup-To: comp.software-eng
Organization: Personal CAD Systems, Westford, MA


Most of the responses I received were requests for the
summary.  Apparently this is a problem for many software
development sites.  A summary of the responses I received is
below.

I thank everyone who responded to my request and apologize
that I didn't get the summary posted sooner.

     -- John

My original posting:

  I am looking for the software version control software
  package, RCVS to run on Sun and RISC System/6000
  workstations.  My understanding is that this is the CVS
  version control software package with extensions to handle
  multiple development sites.  This software was mentioned
  during the system administration tutorial sessions at the
  USENIX conference last month.

  I'm also interested in what others have done to solve this
  problem.  We have three development sites each with a copy
  of our source repository.  Two are connected by a 56K line
  and the third is a single host connected via modem by uucp.
  Basically, I want changes made to one copy to get
  transferred to the other sites' repositories with some
  verification that the updates were successful and that each
  repository is synchronized with each other.  The difficult
  part of this is in resolving a simultaneous update to the
  same file in different release areas ("simultaneous" in this
  case can mean a couple of hours apart if the sites are
  separated by uucp over the phone line).


Summary:

Brian Berliner maintains a CVS mailing list.  if you are
interested in subscribing to it, he can be reached at address:

  Brian.Berliner@Central.Sun.com


From: Jeff Polk <uunet!BSDI.COM!polk>

  I am the other author of CVS (with Brian Berliner) and am the person
  working on RCVS.  I have a prototype which mostly works, but which still
  has some major problems.  I'll be going on vacation next week, and I
  hope to get some work done on it while I'm gone.


From: Peter Costantinidis Jr. <uunet!ossi.com!peterc>

  While I was at UniSoft we used a system for keeping different
  development sites in sync with eachother.  We had developers
  in the UK (London) and in California (Emeryville) simultaneously
  modifying, among other things, kernel source code.  We used "uucp"
  to ship the data, though rcp, etc., could be used as well.

  I am now with a different company (OSSI), where we hope to
  eventually use the same system for keeping our source in sync
  with a site in San Jose and a couple of sites in Japan.

  UniSoft is now selling this as a product, so you should contact
  them to find what's involved in getting it.  Ask about "DV" and
  "Robacom".

  The way the system worked was fairly simple:

  o incoming changes are applied to local site
  o local site generates its local changes
  o local changes are transmitted to remote sites

  The philosophy was that all sites would have identical
  source, ignoring update latency.  That is, assuming that
  no one worked on weekends, on Monday mornings all sites
  would be the same.  On Tuesday and other mornings, they
  are probably not identical due to changes which have not
  yet been generated or applied.  This all assumes different
  timezones.  If everyone was in the same timezone, then it
  is quite likely that each morning all sites would be in sync.

  If your communication mechanism was cheap, you could get by
  with updates being transmitted hourly.  Since ours was a long
  distance phone call to Europe, we only called twice a day.


From: uunet!mailrus!uflorida!qtp.ufl.edu!bernhold

  I have not heard of "RCVS".

  Somewhere in the most recent GNU CVS distribution (1.3, I think) it was
  mentioned that additions to facilitate remote development were planned
  (short term, it sounded like).  Maybe you are actually referring to a
  new version of CVS (possibly not yet released)?

  The originator of CVS, Dick Grune, continues to develop a version
  implemented as shell scripts.  The GNU version uses the same ideas but
  codes them in C and adds some fancier logging, etc. than the scripts
  do.  I believe Grune's CVS is now somewhat ahead of GNU CVS as far as
  features go.  I think this version can be had from
  star.cs.vu.nl:dick/cvs.  I don't know anything about it, but it seems
  that it might be relevant.


From: Kimmo Suominen <uunet!lut.fi!Kimmo.Suominen>

  I am also interested in multi-site version control.  I would really
  like to hear how others do it.

  I am now using RCS on two sites and manually transfer changes over to
  the main repository.  I am myself using a private repository, which I
  destroy every now and then when I have completed work for a release.
  For minor changes I just lock the file in the main repository without
  copying the whole RCS tree.

  This is all very tedious, and I would love to hear about an automated
  system that would work over UUCP as well.


From: uunet!informatik.rwth-aachen.de!steinbr (Michael Steinbrunn)

  we are currently running into the same problem of organising
  distributed software development. I've already considered
  writing a couple of shell scripts that utilise the ordinary
  email service in order help us keeping the sources
  consistent. But if there exists a package that already does
  this, I would like to try it first. I've queried archie
  without avail; if you receive any information, could you
  drop me a line? Thank you very much in advance.





-- 
John Grow (System Administrator, P-CAD/CADAM Boston R&D Office)
Personal CAD Systems/CADAM  |   uucp: uunet!pcad!johng
1 Technology Park Drive     |
Westford, MA 01886          |
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng