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(cvs.info)When to commit

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Up: Revision management

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When to commit?
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   Your group should decide which policy to use regarding commits.
Several policies are possible, and as your experience with CVS grows
you will probably find out what works for you.

   If you commit files too quickly you might commit files that do not
even compile.  If your partner updates his working sources to include
your buggy file, he will be unable to compile the code.  On the other
hand, other persons will not be able to benefit from the improvements
you make to the code if you commit very seldom, and conflicts will
probably be more common.

   It is common to only commit files after making sure that they can be
compiled.  Some sites require that the files pass a test suite.
Policies like this can be enforced using the commitinfo file (Note:
commitinfo), but you should think twice before you enforce such a
convention.  By making the development environment too controlled it
might become too regimented and thus counter-productive to the real
goal, which is to get software written.