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(cvsbook.info)Tips And Troubleshooting

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Tips And Troubleshooting
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I've said in earlier chapters that CVS is not "black box" software.
Black boxes don't let you peek inside; they don't give you internal
access so that you can fix (or break) things.  The premise is that the
black box usually doesn't need to be fixed.  Most of the time, the
software should work perfectly, so users don't need internal access.
But when black boxes do fail, they tend to fail completely.  Any problem
at all is a showstopper, because there aren't many options for repair.

CVS is more like a perfectly transparent box - except without the box.
Its moving parts are exposed directly to the environment, not
hermetically sealed off, and bits of that environment (unexpected file
permissions, interrupted commands, competing processes, whatever) can
sometimes get inside the mechanism and gum up the gears.  But even
though CVS does not always work perfectly, it rarely fails completely,
either.  It has the advantage of graceful degradation; the degree to
which it doesn't work is usually proportional to the number and severity
of problems in its environment.  If you know enough about what CVS is
trying to do - and how it's trying to do it - you'll know what to do
when things go wrong.

Although I can't list all of the problems that you might encounter, I've
included some of the more common ones here.  This chapter is divided
into two sections: The first describes those parts of the environment to
which CVS is most sensitive (mainly repository permissions and the
working copy administrative area), and the second describes some of the
most frequently encountered problems and their solutions.  By seeing how
to handle these common situations, you will get a feeling for how to
approach any unexpected problem in CVS.

The Usual Suspects

Things that often cause trouble.

General Troubleshooting Tips

General diagnostic techniques.

Some Real Life Problems (With Solutions)

A compendium of actual problems.