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(cvsbook.info)Finding Out Who Is Watching What

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Finding Out Who Is Watching What
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Sometimes you may want to know who's watching before you even run cvs
edit or want to see who is editing what without adding yourself to any
watch lists.  Or you may have forgotten exactly what your own status is.
After setting and unsetting a few watches and committing some files,
it's easy to lose track of what you're watching and editing.

CVS provides two commands to show who's watching and who's editing files
- cvs watchers and cvs editors:

     floss$ whoami
     jrandom
     floss$ cvs watch add hello.c
     floss$ cvs watchers hello.c
     hello.c jrandom  edit unedit  commit
     floss$ cvs watch remove -a unedit hello.c
     floss$ cvs watchers hello.c
     hello.c jrandom  edit commit
     floss$ cvs watch add README.txt
     floss$ cvs watchers
     README.txt      jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     hello.c jrandom edit    commit
     floss$

Notice that the last cvs watchers command doesn't specify any files and,
therefore, shows watchers for all files (all those that have watchers,
that is).

All of the watch and edit commands have this behavior in common with
other CVS commands.  If you specify file names, they act on those files.
If you specify directory names, they act on everything in that directory
and its subdirectories.  If you don't specify anything, they act on the
current directory and everything underneath it, to as many levels of
depth as are available.  For example (continuing with the same session):

     floss$ cvs watch add a-subdir/whatever.c
     floss$ cvs watchers
     README.txt      jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     hello.c jrandom edit    commit
     a-subdir/whatever.c     jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     floss$ cvs watch add
     floss$ cvs watchers
     README.txt      jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     foo.gif jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     hello.c jrandom edit    commit  unedit
     a-subdir/whatever.c     jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     a-subdir/subsubdir/fish.c       jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     b-subdir/random.c       jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     floss$

The last two commands made jrandom a watcher of every file in the
project and then showed the watch list for every file in the project,
respectively.  The output of `cvs watchers' doesn't always line up
perfectly in columns because it mixes tab stops with information of
varying length, but the lines are consistently formatted:

     [FILENAME] [whitespace] WATCHER [whitespace] ACTIONS-BEING-WATCHED...

Now watch what happens when qsmith starts to edit one of the files:

     paste$ cvs edit hello.c
     paste$ cvs watchers
     README.txt      jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     foo.gif jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     hello.c jrandom edit    commit  unedit
            qsmith  tedit   tunedit tcommit
     a-subdir/whatever.c     jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     a-subdir/subsubdir/fish.c       jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     b-subdir/random.c       jrandom edit    unedit  commit

The file hello.c has acquired another watcher: qsmith himself (note that
the file name is not repeated but is left as white space at the
beginning of the line - this would be important if you ever wanted to
write a program that parses watchers output).  Because he's editing
hello.c, qsmith has a "temporary watch" on the file; it goes away as
soon as he commits a new revision of hello.c.  The prefix `t' in front
of each of the actions indicates that these are temporary watches.  If
qsmith adds himself as a regular watcher of hello.c as well

     paste$ cvs watch add hello.c
     README.txt      jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     foo.gif jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     hello.c jrandom edit    commit  unedit
            qsmith  tedit   tunedit tcommit edit    unedit  commit
     a-subdir/whatever.c     jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     a-subdir/subsubdir/fish.c       jrandom edit    unedit  commit
     b-subdir/random.c       jrandom edit    unedit  commit

he is listed as both a temporary watcher and a permanent watcher.  You
may think that the permanent watch status would simply override the
temporary, so that the line would look like this:

             qsmith  edit    unedit  commit

However, CVS can't just replace the temporary watches because it doesn't
know in what order things happen.  Will qsmith remove himself from the
permanent watch list before ending his editing session, or will he
finish the edits while still remaining a watcher?  If the former, the
edit/unedit/commit actions disappear while the tedit/tunedit/tcommit
ones remain; if the latter, the reverse would happen.

Anyway, that side of the watch list is usually not of great concern.
Most of the time, what you want to do is run

     floss$ cvs watchers

or

     floss$ cvs editors

from the top level of a project and see who's doing what.  You don't
really need to know the details of who cares about what actions: the
important things are people and files.