Grabbing XFree86.org's xc/ tree using cvsup

[David Fraser]

Mike A. Harris wrote:

>On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, David Fraser wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>>My suggestion is to import the current "stable" release into our CVS. 
>>>>With
>>>>CVS we can later import the next release and merge all patches we have
>>>>already commited. Fixing severe bugs is still an issue and might be 
>>>>solved
>>>>by regulary importing the snapshots of the "stable" branch and by 
>>>>monitoring
>>>>the XFree-commit list (I still read every posting on this list and would
>>>>just pay more attention to security fixes)
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Mike Harris had a good point that we should grab XFree86's CVS tree 
>>>with cvsup and use a perl script to change the root for all of the 
>>>files. Then we have both the current version of all files *and* the 
>>>history of all of those files.
>>>      
>>>
>>Note that this requires cvsupd to run on the server side ... do XFree86 
>>already run cvsupd?
>>    
>>
>
>Yes.  XFree86.org has offered a cvsup access method for many 
>years.  I've been using cvsup to mirror the XFree86 repository 
>for about 2.5 years now.  It works great.  The initial mirroring 
>usually takes about 1.5 hours on my 300/125 (up/down) connection, 
>and after that, daily updates via cron at 5am take about 2 
>minutes on average.
>
>  
>
>>If not, you may find it easier to ask them for a tarball of the
>>CVSROOT to get going, and then something like cvsps (suggested
>>by Mike below) to keep up to date.
>>    
>>
>
>I can make a tarball of the repository and upload it to 
>freedesktop.org if someone would prefer.  Really though it'd be 
>nice for us to just have a cvsps mirror on fd.o sync'd nightly 
>for everyone to use.  That could be tarballed easily after 
>mirroring is complete and copied into a new home for further 
>development.
>
>
>  
>
>>>He suggested using cvsps to generate patch sets. He also suggested 
>>>doing our development on a branch, keeping HEAD more or less in sync 
>>>with XFree86.org CVS HEAD, and merge HEAD to our branch whenever 
>>>required (to get bug fixes, etc.).
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>I doubt that a complete mirror of the XFree86 CVS is a good solution 
>>>>since
>>>>there is no way (at least I konw of none) to automaticly track 
>>>>changes in
>>>>the XFree86 repository and commit them to ours too. So importing the 
>>>>whole
>>>>repository is in my opinion a waste of space since we'd have to 
>>>>import all
>>>>old revisions from the XFree repository too.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>I think Mike had a good point that it would be wise to have the 
>>>history of each file in the tree... what do you think?
>>>      
>>>
>>I think this would be great ; it also allows the possibility of 
>>producing security-patched versions of older versions of XFree86, and 
>>the version history also provides a kind of documentation of the source
>>    
>>
>
>Yep.  It also allows people to branch XFree86 releases anywhere
>in the past also, so one could theoretically maintain
>4.1.0/4.2.1/4.3.0 beyond the timeframe XFree86.org would be
>willing to do so.  I've thought of doing that before, but I 
>figured unless I was going to spend time doing enough work on the 
>tree and backporting some things that it wouldn't be worth the 
>effort.  As time goes on and I have to support 4.1.0 for a 
>billion years due to long term support of our OS products, I 
>might change my mind and use CVS.  ;o)
>
>
>  
>
Mike,
Thanks for the reply. That clarifies everything.
David
(CCing this to the cygwin-xfree mailing list so everyone else can see 
the message too...)