removing CVS in Handbook Updating and Upgrading chapter

[Isaac Levy (.ike)]

Guys, I'm very embarrassed, I meant to send this but hid the window in my dock instead.
(skip to end to avoid continuing the same conversation- long story short, I concede your plan is good)

On Jan 27, 2013, at 5:16 PM, Warren Block wrote:
> On Sun, 27 Jan 2013, Isaac (.ike) Levy wrote:
>> Warren, I owe you and Glen a drink for dealing with this exasperating thread.
>> I wouldn't continue if I didn't believe new users first installs are extremely important,
> 
> Me either.  Although I don't understand why new users would csup -STABLE or -CURRENT on their first installs…

I'm with you- SVN there!

> 
>> On Jan 27, 2013, at 3:15 PM, Warren Block wrote:
>>> 
>>> Say we leave CVS references in this chapter, and CVS for source goes away in (for example) six months.  Anyone who starts using CVS in that time will be forced to switch.  And they would be justifiably upset, because they were offered an option that was going away.
>> 
>> I can totally agree, all *CVS* verbiage can be removed from the doc.
> 
> By CVS, I mean the application itself and the special-case programs that use it, like csup and cvsup.

Enthusiastic +1, raze it it in doc.

> 
>>> My personal feeling is that continuing to suggest CVS for -STABLE or -CURRENT, even with a deprecation warning, is a disservice to those users.
>> 
>> I can certainly see that point.  cusp(1) has a man page, config files, etc? it's pretty self-evident to admins who want to use it.
>> 
>> --
>> However, the one place where people are getting tripped up, is the quick fetch required before buildworld/buildkernel:
>> 
>> I see nothing but benefit leaving one line before the buildworld/makeworld dance:
>> # csup /usr/share/examples/standard-supfile
> 
> But that's not in there now.  The sections about updating source are separate from the buildworld section.  And the cvsup/csup part is not one line, because it goes into details about editing the supfile. Which must be done before running that single line, because the example doesn't work as-is.

Good point on default config-  Muscle memory has me doing this in my sleep,

# cvsup -h cvsup14.us.freebsd.org /usr/share/examples/standard-supfile

> 
>> And one more line after that,
>> "cvsup/csup(1) has been deprecated, and will be end-of-lifed when the replacement is completed in base"
> 
> Followed by "Do not use this, because it will go away permanently soon. In fact, it was kind of a mistake to mention it at all, because it's just going to cause you trouble.  Stop using cvs, cvsup, and csup. They don't care about you, they're just using you.  The sooner you quit, the better for everyone.  Seriously, it's over, if you use CVS now you'll just have to switch to something else in a little while anyway. Pick something else.  You can use svn for development versions or portsnap or tar downloads for releases.  Pick anything else, we implore you.  Really, stop using CVS now, right now.  We implore you, stop using that thing we suggested.  If we could take it back, we would.  Looking back fills us with sorrow and regret.  In fact, we're going to retroactively declare that we never said it, and sent you in the right direction in the first place.  We're so sorry.  Please forgive us."

Ha- well, I see your point, (except I don't see how bad it is because it works pretty darned well).

The alternative, to me, is equally frustrating for a new user:

pkg add cvsup, (watch while pkg itself apologizes on it's way to installing itself), whops, just installed pkg?  Yeah- no binary packages right now, come back another day.
now, download ports tree, learn portsnap, (and the few tools like pkg_info which are still *sortof* required to work with ports).
Now, install SVN- dependencies and all.

Now, svn to /usr/src, except whops- what happens if you installed src it with boot media?  svn complains- new to svn?  Figure that out, and muster up the courage to rm or mv /usr/src

> 
>> It's a lot simpler than leading them down the SVN setup path, the state it's in today!
> 
> svn has to be installed from ports... but so did cvsup, and it had large dependencies,


Correct- Perl was a cvsup dependency, that's way bigger than SVN,

> and people still use it.  svn setup is simpler than cvsup or csup--no supfile, it's just URLs.
> 
> But again, those are arguments against deprecating CVS, not against removing it from the documentation.  

Indeed- lets not touch that on doc list.

> That head has crashed on the platter, the swallow has dropped the coconut, the anti-increment has impacted the impeller.

10-4 on that.

--
Cool- we understand each other- you call it, I'll stand behind you on it.
Enough of both of our time used- this transition problem has no ideal solution in documentation.

Even though I disagree with the tactic, the spirit of your approach is awesome (and cvsup serving src won't be alive for too long), we'll all only have to deal with this transition mess for (n) months more, (hopefully n<6).

In the meantime, hope to buy you a beer.

/salute

Best,
.ike