Re: cvs init

["David H. Gutteridge" <david%gutteridge.ca@localhost>]

On Fri, 2019-02-08 at 01:15 -0500, David H. Gutteridge wrote:
> On Thu, 07 Feb 2019, at 13:46:00 -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
> > > $ cd /tmp
> > > $ mkdir foo
> > > $ cvs -d /tmp/foo init
> > > cvs [init aborted]: init to an existing repository is restricted
> > > to
> > members of the group cvsadmin
> > > $ grep cvsadmin /etc/group 
> > > $
> > > 
> > > I thought that if the cvsadmin group didn't exist on the system,
> > this
> > > restriction would be completely ignored? (according to "cvs admin"
> > command -
> > > no mention of it being applicable at all to "cvs init")
> > 
> > I just did "cvs -d /tmp/foo init" without creating foo first, and it
> > worked fine (netbsd-8).
> > 
> > The error is about running init on an *existing* repository.
> > 
> > I don't see that rerunning init on a repo that exists is something
> > anybody really wants to do, and if they do why using rm first is a
> > real problem.
> 
> The CVS documentation for version 1.12.13 states:
> 
> "cvs init is careful to never overwrite any existing files in the
> repository, so no harm is done if you run cvs init on an already set-
> up repository."
> https://web.archive.org/web/20111020045251/http://ximbiot.com/cvs/manual/cvs-1.12.13/cvs_2.html#SEC2

I realized I may have been unclear: I wasn't advocating for that as a
normal practice, or denying the code treats this as an error. I meant
that it's kind of counterintuitive to put a statement like that in
documentation without a caveat. (Basically what everyone else is saying
too.)

> > As for the man page omission, maybe see if the bug is in upstream
> > and
> > file a bug with them ;-) ?
> > 
> > We could change the code to just not allow init of an existing dir
> > at
> > all.
> 
> There is also a related NetBSD PR filed back in 2011:
> http://gnats.netbsd.org/45182

That PR is no longer relevant, it was addressed by christos@ in 2011.

Dave