[GRASS5] WARNING: CVS broken

[Glynn Clements]

Bernhard Reiter wrote:

> > > > I just tried a "cvs update", and it very much looks as if the CVS
> > > > repository has suffered a botched merge attempt. I *really* hope that
> > > > someone has a backup.
> > > 
> > > If there are no better solutions then I have the the entire tagged release
> > > that I downloaded and updated about 4 1/2 hours ago. I've made no changes.
> > 
> > I meant a backup of the repository itself; I reverted my local copy
> > with "cvs update -r ... -D ...".
> > 
> > But the repository itself would ideally be restored to the state it
> > was in before the snafu. Otherwise there's going to be a pretty
> > massive artifact in the revision history. Unfortunately CVS doesn't
> > have a "rollback" command.
> 
> As Jan pointed out we do have a backup.
> On the other hand we should try to work out the problems 
> using CVS first before trying the backup (IMO).

The problem with attempting to fix it using CVS is the lack of a
"rollback" option. You can check-out an older version then re-commit
it, but the aberration persists in the revision history for all time.

Basically, the only way to make CVS "forget" something is to either
restore the repository from a backup, or modify the repository
directly (and I definitely wouldn't recommend the latter option).

This can be a serious problem if someone commits something which is
legally problematic, e.g. code which infringes patents or copyrights,
contains defamatory comments etc.

In this case, it's just a nuisance.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>