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Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition
book

Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

by Arnold Robbins
October 2005
Intermediate to advanced
908 pages
46h 42m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Stickiness

When some aspect of the persistent state of a file in a sandbox is different from that of the file in the repository, that aspect is said to be sticky. For example, when a file is retrieved based on a specific date, tag, or revision, those attributes are sticky. Similarly, when a file in a sandbox belongs to a branch, the branch is said to be sticky, and if the keyword expansion mode is set on a file, that mode is also sticky. Entire directories may be marked as sticky, not just individual files.

These attributes are termed “sticky” because the state of the file becomes persistent. In particular, a cvs update does not update such files to the latest revision in the repository. Similarly, you cannot use cvs commit to make such a file become the head of a branch or the trunk in the repository. Finally, when a file is on a sticky branch, it can only be committed on that branch. cvs status shows the stickiness of various attributes.

This all makes sense: work on a branch should be done only on that branch. When work on the branch is finished, the branch’s changes should be merged into the files on the trunk, instead of checking the files into the head of the trunk directly.

Stickiness is created or changed using the -D, -k or -r options to cvs checkout and cvs update. Use cvs update -A to remove stickiness. You must use this command on a sticky directory directly; applying it just to all the contained files in the directory is not enough.

See Chapter 4 in Essential CVS for more ...

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ISBN: 0596100299Errata Page