[Openal-devel] CVS permission trouble

[Panne Sven BenQ MD PBM IPM TPS 4]

The current layout of the CVS repository is not optimal, because e.g. the
"openal/linux" subdirectory is not self-contained and needs "openal/include"
for the standard headers. Copying the headers manually or requiring users to
check out the source code for *all* platforms is more than ugly. But CVS
offers a nice solution for this, using the capabilities in "CVSROOT/modules"
(http://ximbiot.com/cvs/manual/cvs-1.12.13/cvs_18.html#SEC177). Basically
one can "mount" parts of the repositories together (renaming "linux" to
"unix", which is more appropriate):

--------- CVSROOT/modules --------------------------------
unixsrc -d unix        openal/linux
unixhdr -d unix/common openal/include
unix    -a unixsrc unixhdr
----------------------------------------------------------

This defines 2 helper modules "unixsrc" and "unixhdr", which are not meant
to be used on their own. The main point here is the alias module "unix",
which combines the 2 helper modules. The resulting layout after a "cvs co
unix" should be:

   unix/common/include/AL/al.h
   unix/common/include/AL/alc.h
   unix/include/AL/alext.h
   unix/src/...
   unix/INSTALL
   unix/...

I was able to commit a version of CVSROOT/modules, which had the arguments
swapped, but trying to commit a fixed version failed to lacking permissions
('"commit" requires write access to the repository'). Strange... Could
somebody at Creative fix the permissions in CVSROOT, so I'm able to commit
there, please?

This "mounting" is being used in other projects I'm involved in and works
quite nice. Subversion has a similar (but more powerful) feature, BTW, so we
won't run into trouble after the migration.

Cheers,
   S.