…it weren’t a soul and productivity destroying piece of shit.
My boss is always nagging the developers to do more documentation, and to put them into the “documenation blog” (which actually has some blog-like features, but it’s mostly a web front-end to a CVS repository). Oh, and you can’t just attach to the CVS server and use good old command line tools – no, you have to use the web front-end, because otherwise it screws up the permssions for everybody else who uses the web tool.
Ok, I’m a team player. I’ll be nice.
So last Friday, I used the web tool to check in a new document. And over the weekend had some second thoughts, so I thought I’d update it. I logged into the web tool, and downloaded a copy. It puts it in /tmp and opens up Open Office on it. I make my edits and save them. I click the upload link. And then I get this:
File upload successful!
/usr/local/cvsroot/DCinema/Teams/COS Software/docs/Architecture/Rating Systems/Multiple Rating System Design.doc,v < -- /usr/local/cvsroot/DCinema/Teams/COS Software/docs/Architecture/Rating Systems/Multiple Rating System Design.doc
ci: can't make temporary pathname `/tmp/rcsJI9ju6/T0XXXXXX'
ci aborted
Error: Check-In /usr/local/cvsroot/DCinema/Teams/COS Software/docs/Architecture/Rating Systems/Multiple Rating System Design.doc Failed
I look at the directory (still using the web tool) and now there are two copies of "Multiple Rating System Design.doc" in that directory, and it says both of them are 19 hours old. WTF? One of them is at least 5 days old, and the other is only a few minutes old. Neither of them have revision numbers nor author ids nor comment logs.
Great, sure glad I didn't just leave the document in ~/docs like I used to. Having it in a souce code control system like CVS is such a blessing, isn't it?