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A few weeks ago I tried the magic branches, on the surface they appear to work but there were some problems when you dug deeper. I can't remember what exactly the problems were but they were significant. I think it had to do with magic branches on top of branches or magic branches. Also I think that cvs graph and CVSView had problems with them. I found that I wanted a way to float the branches on command. I.E. At some point I'm ready to merge the main line code to my branch but I didn't want to actually create branch revisions for files that had changed on the main line but not in my branch I just wanted the branch to float to the head revision for those files. It looks like WinCVS has a macro to do something like this but I haven't been able to try it because our old, old server doesn't support the options the macro uses. Matt S. Oliver Giesen wrote: > Tony Hoyle wrote: > > >>Prochazka, Jan wrote: >> >>>Wouldn't be possible to specify at the beginning at revision 1.10 a >>>"virtual branch" that would become real branch if and only if >>>somebody commits to the branch ? Until that, any update of branch B >>>returns HEAD of file F, because the real branch not exist yet. >> >>Yes, that's called a floating or 'magic' branch (tag -M). They're >>not as useful as they seem in practice, but the option is there. > > > Cool, I wasn't aware you managed to fix these. I remember trying them > quite some time ago and they weren't really working at all and that was > the last I heard or read about them since. Now after reading this I > gave them another try and all went fine! :) > > Well, almost... > > With one file I got the following problem: > > cvs tag -M Magic-BRANCH test.txt > [modify test.txt] > cvs ci test.txt > "cvs [server aborted]: Revision 2.9 is already locked by HQ\GiesenO" > > Could the problem be the forced revision number here? At least that's > the only difference I was able to make out in comparison to the files > where it worked. I definitely did not lock the file in any sense I > could think of (i.e. admin -l, edit -x, -kx). Access was via :sspi: to > a local 2115 server (using the same as client) and HQ\GiesenO is my own > user name. > > > BTW: What would you say would be the minimal server version requirement > for using magic branches, i.e. since when are they "stable" (or at > least since when are they in their current state)? > > Also, do you think there's any way to turn an existing branch into a > magic one? What about the other way? Can I make it stop floating > without having to force commit a (dummy) branch revision? > > Cheers, >