=head1 NAME

ic_howto_cvs - Interchange + CVS HOWTO

=head1 DESCRIPTION

=head1 Introduction

=head2 Preamble

Copyright 2001 Dan Browning <danpb@mail.com>.  This document is freely
redistributable under terms of the GNU General Public License.

=head2 Purpose

The purpose of this document is to help others take advantage of CVS
and Interchange together to increase the quality of their programming,
whether they are sole developers or part of a large team of
programmers, graphic artists, and HTML design gurus.  Portions of it
apply to general CVS setup and use, but it is geared toward the
average developer using Interchange to implement an e-commerce
website.

=head2 Audience

I intend for this document to be useful to those who are not yet
familiar with CVS as well as those who are.  If you already know how
to setup a pserver then you might just skim chapter 2 ("Setup CVS"),
or skip it all together.

In addition, I have tried to write at a technical level that would be
on par with what I percieve to be the average Interchange user that
participates on the interchange-users mailing list.  It is assumed
that the reader can and already has setup Interchange and the template
catalog (such as foundation or construct) is working correctly.

=head2 Contact the author

If you find any spelling errors, technical slipups, mistakes,
subliminal messages, or if you wish to send feedback, critique,
remarks, comments, or if you wish to contribute examples, instructions
for alternative platforms, chapters, or other material, please do so.

The preferred method of submitting changes is in the form of a context
diff against the SDF source file (ic_cvs.sdf).  Please address your
correspondence to:

Dan Browning I<danpb@mail.com>

=head2 The advantages of using CVS

CVS is a very useful tool and can help you in your development, no
matter if you are one developer or are part of a team of developers.

=over 4

=item *

What is CVS all about?

=item *

What are it's advantages?

=back

The official CVS website (L<http://www.cvshome.org/new_users.html>)
has more detailed answers to these questions, but here are some brief
points of interest.

=over 4

=item *

Checkout "historic" points in time or milestones in a project, for
example when an e-commerce site went "live" or before a major branch
in the code.

=item *

Revert to older versions of a file, directory, or an entire website.

=item *

Branching releases.  Concurrently develop an unstable development
version as well as fix bugs in the stable production version.

=item *

Multiple developers can work on the same catalog and even the same
file at the same time.  (For more information about how multiple
simultaneous writes are merged and conflicts resolved, see the cvs
docs in the I<Resources> Appendix).

=item *

CVS is better than ftp for file transfer, because it automatically
downloads only changed files, and even then, only the portion of the
file that has changed (using patches).

=item *

CVS can automatically merge two simultaneous writes to the same file
by different developers.

=item *

Allows one to keep track of the changes that have been made over time
(many release managers repackage cvs commit logs into WHATSNEW,
HISTORY, and/or NEWS files).

=back

=head2 How to use this document

There are many potential uses of CVS as it applies to Interchange.  In
fact, there are as many unique ways to use CVS as there are unique
developers.  This document only covers some of the ways, including
basic and useful techniques to get started using CVS.  For the intents
of the average web developer using IC for a B2C e-commerce site, I've
identified a few of the possible uses:

Simple

=over 4

=item *

One server

=item *

One catalog

=item *

One cvs module

=item *

One branch

=back

Medium

=over 4

=item *

One server

=item *

Two catalogs (e.g., one is live, one is development)

=item *

One cvs modules

=item *

Seperate development and live branches

=back

Complex/Custom

=over 4

=item *

Multiple servers (e.g., developers' servers, staging servers, and live
servers)

=item *

Multiple catalogs

=item *

Multiple cvs modules

=item *

Multiple branches

=item *

Custom setup

=back

This document attempts to cover the simple well, and explain many
aspects of the medium.  Which will hopefully give you the background
you need if you decide to setup your own complex development
environment.

=head1 Setup CVS

=head2 Assumptions

Here are some of the assumptions that I make that apply to various
parts of the rest of this document:

=over 4

=item *

Red Hat 7.x

=item *

Interchange installed (RPM or tarball)

=item *

Default interchange tarball installation directory paths (adjust for
your environment)

=item *

Template catalog setup and working

=back

B<Note: >I will assume "foundation" for the catalog name and directory
paths, but it should be just as easy to use this document with the
construct catalog or your own catalog by mentally transposing the
names and paths.

There shouldn't be any reason why you could not do everything I
mention here on other Linux distributions, unicies or Windows (using
cygwin).  However, my statements will reflect Red Hat 7.x. 
Additionally, Red Hat 6.x is for the most part the same as 7.x, except
for the difference of using inetd instead of xinetd to setup pserver.

=head2 Install CVS

This is the easy part.  For Red Hat systems, download the cvs rpms and
install them.  The following RPM command will download and install the
Red Hat 7.1 version of cvs from rpmfind.net.

B<Note: >You need to be root to complete the following tasks

 su - root
rpm -Uvh ftp://speakeasy.rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/7.1/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/cvs-1.11-3.i386.rpm

Create the user and group that will administrate the interchange
repository.  For this document, it will be the interch user, (which
was setup during the installation of Interchange).  But if you
understand the mechanics of Unix users/groups, then you can use
whatever username and group scheme you prefer.  For example, some
create a cvs user and cvs group, then add the interchange user and
catalog owner to it's group and/or vise-versa.  The integration of
interchange and CVS in the latter portion of this document will
require that the CVS user has some write capability to the catalog
directory.

=head2 Create the CVS repository directory

You will need to create a repository directory such as F</rep>, which
is used here and in the rest of the document, but it can be any
directory you desire, and must be owned by the cvs user.  Many use
F</var/rep> or F</home/cvs/rep>.

        su - root
        mkdir /rep
        chown interch.interch /rep

=head2 Setup environment variables

The CVSROOT and EDITOR environment variables should be setup for all
users in /etc/profile.  Of course, EDITOR can be whatever Unix text
editor you prefer, such as F<vi>, F<emacs>, F<pico>, or F<joe>.

 /etc/profile:

export CVSROOT=/rep
export EDITOR=vi

B<Note: >You will need to logout/login for the profile changes to take
effect.

=head2 Initialize the repository

Initialize the repository as the CVS user, which is interch for
this document.

        su - interch
        cvs -d /rep init

=head2 CVS Authentication

Background

Authentication is done in CVS through the F<$CVSROOT/CVSROOT/passwd>
file.  It can be easily manipulated through some of the CVS
administration tools that are available.

CVS administration tools

=over 4

=item *

L<http://freshmeat.net/projects/cvsadmin/>

=item *

L<http://freshmeat.net/projects/cvspadm/>

=back

I recommend cvsadmin, but there are also a variety of manual methods
that can be used in the absence of such tools, one of which involves
copying the system shadow file and modifying it for use by CVS.  For
more information on this manual method, see the RedHat CVS pserver
setup guide by Michael Amorose
(L<http://www.michael-amorose.com/cvs/>).

Setup authentication using the cvsadmin tool

You can find a tarball to install on your system using the above
address, but here is the address of a recent RPM package of the
version.  This package is intended for mandrake systems, but is
compatible with Red Hat 7.1:

=over 4

=item *

L<ftp://speakeasy.rpmfind.net/linux/Mandrake-devel/contrib/RPMS/cvsadmin-1.0.1-1mdk.i586.rpm>

=back

After installing, create a password file (I<touch
$CVSROOT/CVSROOT/passwd>), and execute C<cvsadmin add
<usernamesE<gt>>.

=head2 Setup CVS modules

B<Note: >From this point on, assume that all commands are executed as
the CVS user (e.g. interch), unless otherwise specified.

A module is CVS is like the concept of a "project", where each module
has its own branches, trees,  and other features.

Add your project to the F<modules> configuration file

The format of the modules file is explained in detail in the cvs
documentation, here is the simplest way to use it:

 /rep/CVSROOT/modules:

<Module name><TAB><Module Directory>

The module name can be whatever you want, and the module directory is
what we will create later under /rep.  We'll want a module for the
template catalog (foundation).  For example:

 foundation      foundation

Create the module directory

This is the directory that is referred to in the F<CVSROOT/modules>
file we just modified.

 mkdir /rep/foundation

=head2 Setup binary file types

This isn't necessary if you aren't going to manage any binary files
(e.g. if you plan on excluding your /images/ directory).  But I
recommend including it.  The following is an example including many
binary file types (by extension) used in web development.

 /rep/CVSROOT/cvswrappers:

*.avi   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.doc   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.exe   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.gif   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.gz    -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.hqx   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.jar   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.jpeg  -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.jpg   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.mov   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.mpg   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.pdf   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.png   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.ppt   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.sit   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.swf   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.tar   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.tgz   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.tif   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.tiff  -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.xbm   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.xls   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'
*.zip   -k 'b' -m 'COPY'

=head2 Testing your repository

At this point, you should have a working (though empty) CVS
repository.  Before we continue with setting up the pserver or
importing source code, try logging in as one of the cvs users listed
in your CVSROOT/passwd and test the checkout.

 #test checkout in home directory of any cvs user
mkdir ~/src
cd ~/src
cvs co foundation

This should create F<foundation/> and F<foundation/CVS>.

=head2 Setup the CVS pserver

You will likely need to be root to do this, and there are lots of
guides on the internet for setting up a cvs pserver, hopefully you
wont have any trouble doing it on your particular operating system. 
See the I<Resources> Appendix for more information.

Setup pserver in Red Hat 7.1 using xinetd.

For Red Hat 7.x, edit F</etc/xinetd.d/cvspserver> (create a new one if
none exists).  The following works for me, but customization may be
required for your environment (see the next section below for an
inetd-based system example).  This also must be done as root.

 su - root
/etc/xinetd.d/cvspserver:

# default: on
service cvspserver
{
        disable = no
        socket_type  = stream
        protocol  = tcp
        wait   = no
        user    = root
        server   = /usr/bin/cvs
        server_args  = -f --allow-root=/rep pserver

}

Also unset the HOME variable in xinetd.  This was required for my
repository to work correctly, but if anyone has a better suggestion, I
would appreciate a note.

 /etc/xinetd.d/cvspserver:

unset HOME

Now, restart xinetd for the changes to take effect.

 service xinetd restart

Setup pserver in inetd-based systems.

I haven't tested this (any takers?), but something like the following
needs to be done for inetd-based systems such as Red Hat 6.2.  Make
sure that the following files are setup accordingly.

 /etc/services:

cvspserver      2401/tcp
N:/etc/inetd.conf:

cvspserver stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/bin/cvs --allow-root=/usr/local/newrepos pserver

Testing your pserver

At this point, you should be able to use a cvs client to use your
pserver and execute all the same commands that you can locally (which
we tested before).  You may wish to take advantage of a graphical cvs
client, which can be particularly helpful in leveling the learning
curve.

See the I<Resources> Appendix for links to some graphical CVS tools.

=head1 Import your Interchange catalog into CVS

=head2 Configuring your catalog

Eventually, we will import your catalog into the cvs repository, but
first we need to do some work with a temporary copy of the catalog so
we can get it into shape for importing.

B<Note: >From here on, assume the use of the interchange user, such as
interch, unless otherwise noted.

 su - interch

If you installed via RPM:

 service interchange stop

If you installed via tarball (default path):

 /usr/local/interchange/bin/interchange --stop

=head2 Remove old CVS folders

If, for any reason, you already have CVS/ directories in your
catalog, they must be removed because they might interfere with the
new CVS setup.  For example, maybe you moved servers and you are
setting up CVS again.  You might use the following find command,
which will find any folders named CVS in the current directory and
remove them.  There is probably a better way to deal with old CVS/
folders, but the following works for me (again, suggestions welcome).

B<Note: >You should make a backup of the catalog directory before you
do this.


#Become interchange catalog user
su - interch

#backup catalog folder first
tar czf ~/foundation_backup.tgz /var/lib/interchange/foundation

#get rid of any old CVS folders -- (BE CAREFULL!)
cd /var/lib/interchange/foundation
find . -name CVS -exec rm -Rf {} \;

=head2 Create a working copy of your catalog

A working copy of your catalog is necessary to get it into shape for
use with CVS.  The following command creates a copy in the /tmp
directory.

 cp -a /var/lib/interchange/foundation /tmp/import_foundation
cd /tmp/import_foundation

=head2 Streamline your catalog for CVS

Considerations about what to import into CVS

From your working directory (/tmp/import_foundation), decide which
files will be in the CVS repository, and which will not.  While it is
entirely possible to import the entire catalog into the repository
unchanged, I usually prefer to doctor my directories up before letting
them into my repository because of several reasons:

=over 4

=item *

Will the file be modified by another source?

=back

For example, /etc/order.number is modified by interchange when run.
 But not everyone will use a local development model that includes
running interchange on a directly checked-out copy of their source. 
Which means this specific issue is avoided if you upload every edit
before viewing your changes on a server.

=over 4

=item *

The likelihood that you will modify the file.

=back

For example, if I am certain that I wont every want to modify the
session/ files directly, then I probably wouldn't need to manage that
through CVS, but I do import the empty session/ directory to make it
easier when setting up new catalogs.

=over 4

=item *

Speed.

=back

Managing less files in the repository takes away from the amount of
time required for cvs checkout, update, branching, and other cvs
actions.  For most, this amount of time is small already, but it is a
consideration for some.

=over 4

=item *

Ease of use.

=back

Ease of use is one reason not to remove anything from your catalog
before importing it, because it creates the ability to have a
completely working catalog from just one checkout (much like the CVS
tree at interchange.redhat.com).  Whereas if you leave out other
directories like etc/ session/ orders/, etc., then you must first
combine your checkout with the other working parts of a catalog before
the catalog is viable.  But this is slower and will bring up lots of
harmless notification and warning messages (about changed local
versions) if you run interchange on your local source copy (because
interchange will touch etc/ session/ orders/, etc. directly, and then
warn that your local copy has changed from the CVS copy).  You may be
able to manage some of these notifications and warnings with
F<CVSROOT/cvsignore> or $CVSIGNORE, see the I<Resources> appendix
for more details.

Remove files that aren't needed in CVS

Here is an example of some directories to remove.  If you do move more
directories, be sure to move them to a directory that you can later
use to re-unite with a checked-out copy for a working catalog.  But
here I chose just to move files that are not needed for a template
"skeleton" catalog.

The images directory is typically symlinked to
/var/www/html/foundation/images, so I remove this symlink from the
working copy, and replace it with an exact copy which will go into the
CVS repository.

 cd /tmp/import_foundation
mkdir /tmp/import_foundation_nonCVS

#Setup images directory
rm images
cp -a /var/www/html/foundation/images .

#Remove
mv error.log logs/* orders/* session/* tmp/* upload/*  \
        /tmp/import_foundation_nonCVS

=head2 Import the streamlined catalog

Import the remaining portion of the catalog using the cvs import
command, with "foundation" as the module name and repository directory
name.  See the CVS documentation resources mentioned in Appendix
I<Resources> for more information.

When you run the import command, it will launch $EDITOR (set to
'vi' earlier), and ask for a message to go along with the import
action.  Whatever you see fit to write (e.g. "starting new cvs module
with my foundation catalog...") is fine.

This example import command includes renaming the foundation
"working" directory back to "foundation" for the import.

 su - interch
cd /tmp/import_foundation
cvs import foundation foundation start

=head2 Testing the new CVS module

Now you should be able to do another test checkout or update using any
CVS client, which should now download all the files that you have just
imported into CVS.  Additionally, you might test your newly imported
code by making a change to one of your checked-out source files,
saving it, then committing it.

 index.html:
<!--this is a test comment at the top of index.html-->

Now commit the change

cvs commit index.html

Your changed version will now be resident in the repository.  There
are a lot of good CVS documentation and resources for discovering more
about the checkout/update/commit cycle and other CVS aspects in the
I<Resources> Appendix.

You'll also notice that even if you start your interchange server, the
change you made did not take effect.  The next section will detail the
process of tying CVS and Interchange together in a way that this will
happen automatically.

=head1 Integrate CVS and Interchange

The next step is to allow CVS to update the directory that Interchange
uses to serve pages.

=head2 CVS checkout into the catalog directory

Now it is the time to replace the directories in your catalog that
have counterparts in CVS with fresh checkouts from CVS (this is a
preliminary action to allow CVS to update your catalog directory when
a change is made to CVS).

B<Note: >Make sure interchange daemon is stopped and you have a good
backup before continuing.

tar czf ~/foundation.backup2.tgz /var/lib/interchange/foundation

Checkout a copy from CVS into a different directory (such as
F<foundation_CVS>).

 cd /var/lib/interchange/
cvs co -d foundation_CVS foundation

This should create the F<foundation_CVS/> directory for you, so that
it wont conflict with your existing F<foundation/> directory.

Add any needed files to checked-out catalog

If you removed any directories during the streamlining step, we must
first add those back so that the catalog is usable to Interchange.  In
this document, we only removed unneeded files and left empty
directories.

This can also be the time to copy any "data" files such as orders/
logs/, etc. that might be needed if it is a live catalog.

 cd /var/lib/interchange/foundation
cp -a <NEEDED_FILES> \
        /var/lib/interchange/foundation_CVS

Install and test the new catalog

Now lets move the old F<foundation> out of the way and put the new
F<foundation_CVS> in its place.

 cd /var/lib/interchange/
mv foundation foundation_old
mv foundation_CVS foundation

Now, link up the CVS images for use by Apache.

 cd /var/www/html/foundation/
mv images images_old
ln -s /var/lib/interchange/foundation/images images

Now, you should have a working catalog again.  To make sure, start up
interchange and test the site with your browser.

=head2 Testing manual CVS updates on Interchange catalogs

Next, lets again update the checkout we made a while back before
importing our catalog.  (Alternatively, one could use a visual CVS
client detailed above).

 cd ~/src
cvs -q up -d foundation # -q for quiet, -d for directory prune/update

Additionally, you might test making a change to one of your
checked-out source files, saving it, then committing it.

 index.html:
<!--this is a test comment at the top of index.html-->

Now commit the change

 cvs commit index.html

Your changed version will now be resident in the repository.  Again,
CVS documentation is in the I<Resources> Appendix.

This time, we can allow the changes to take effect on the code being
used by interchange to server pages.  To do so, one must run a cvs
update on the catalog directory:

 cd /var/lib/interchange/foundation
cvs -q up -d    #up is the shortened version of "update"

That should notify you of the new version it downloaded with something
like:

U pages/index.html

You may also get something like the following:

 M catalog.cfg
M etc/status.foundation
M ...
? orders/000001
? ...

The ? lines in the above example mean that the CVS server has never
heard of the listed directories or files (they are in your local
source dir but not in the CVS source dir).  It is harmless, but
sometimes annoying.

The M means that sthe file has been modified on your local copy,
and is out of sync with the remote CVS version (e.g. when Interchange
runs it updates F<etc/status.foundation>).  Normally this is corrected
by uploading your "modified" version to the server, but in this case,
the modification was done by Interchange instead of the programmer,
and wasn't meant to be committed back to the CVS repository.  These
types of messages can be handled with $CVSIGNORE and
$CVSROOT/CVSROOT/cvsignore.

Now, check to make sure that your change has taken effect by
refreshing the homepage on the site.  To see the comment, use
View-E<gt>Page Source or whatever the relevant command for your
browser is.

At this point, its obvious that it would be time consuming to manually
run 'cvs up' every time you make a change to the source code, so the
next step is to setup CVS to automatically update the catalog whenever
you commit something to CVS.

=head2 Automatic updates on commit

Start by modifying $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/loginfo

 ^foundation     (date; cat; (sleep 1; cd /var/lib/interchange/foundation; cvs -q update -d) &) >> $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/updatelog 2>&1

The first line tells cvs that for every commit on modules that start
with "foundation" (notice the regular expression "^foundation"), it
will run cvs update on the given catalog directory in the
background.  It is important that it is executed in a forked shell
(notice the "&") after sleep'ing for 1 second, because otherwise
you may run into contention issues that can cause file locking
problems.  The 1 second timing used above works fine for me, but a
longer pause may be necessary for slower computers (you'll know if you
get errors about "file locked by user").  See the CVS documentation in
the I<Resources> Appendix for more details.

=head2 Automatic e-mail on commit

Often it is very helpful to have a commit mailing list that keeps
developers up-to-date on every commit happening to the CVS.  To setup
automatic e-mails on every commit, put the following in

 /rep/CVSROOT/loginfo:

ALL     /usr/bin/cvs-log     $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/commitlog $USER "%{sVv}"

This tells CVS to pipe the commit output to a shell script, which in
turn updates a log file and e-mails an update (typically to a mailing
list address).  Create the shell script at F</usr/bin/cvs-log> that is
executable by the cvs user (using "chmod 755 /usr/bin/cvs-log").

 /usr/bin/cvs-log:

#!/bin/sh
(echo "----------------------------------------------";
 echo -n $2"  ";
 date;
 echo;
 cat) | tee $1 | /usr/bin/Mail -s "[foundation-cvs] $3" foundation-cvs@example.com

Your commit logs will now be archived in the CVSROOT/commitlog file
and e-mailed to the  foundation-cvs@example.com address (which is
especially useful when you have a I<Mailserver for CVS updates>). 
Here is what a sample e-mail looks like:

 Subject: [foundation-cvs] 'directory/subdirectory filename.c,1.7,1.8'


----------------------------------------------
cvs Fri Mar 16 21:14:09 PST 2001
Update of directory/subdirectory
In directory cvs.foundationsomething.com:/tmp/cvs-serv7721
Modified Files:
filename.c
Log Message:
test

Now you have a working CVS development system.  At this point it may
be valuable to learn more about CVS the client tools that you are
using.

=head1 The two track model: development and live catalogs

It is often very valuable to have a two-track development model that
separates the classes of work into separate timing and decision
categories.  Some use "staging" and "production" terminology, others
prefer "unstable" and "stable", "beta" and "release", or "development"
and "live".

The easiest starting point for two-track development is to just use
two completely separate CVS modules and catalogs.  This can make a lot
of sense for many situations, for example when the next revision of
the site will be so different that it is for all practical purposes
starting from ground zero.

A slightly more complicated solution is to use the CVS branches
feature.  It is more difficult to set up, but can be rewarding when
used correctly.

=head2 When to branch

The first decision is when to branch the source code.  For websites,
this can sometimes be an easy decision like "first went live", or
"site-wide overhaul", etc.

=head2 Which way to branch

There are many different ways to branch source code.  What seems to be
the most common method is to use the "trunk", which is the HEAD tag to
CVS as the development version, and then make a branch when a stable
release is to be made.

That model doesn't fit my development style at the current time, so I
use the HEAD default branch as my stable live version, and use other
tags (like DEV1 and DEV_REALLY_UNSTABLE) for my development branch.

You may find that you are merging (or "folding") most or all of your
development branch back into your stable branch frequently.  This is
because unlike traditional programming where products are launched
every two or three years with new features, web sites often have
little fixes and new features added every day or every few weeks, with
new "releases" happening more often than traditional software
development (though not all web sites follow that trend).  The
flexibility is there to branch the source for quite some time to work
on a very complex feature or complete redesign before bringing it to
the live site, as well as the flexibility for day-to-day updates.

=head2 Performing the branch

To perform the branch use the C<cvs tag -b <BRANCH NAMEE<gt>> command.
 For example:

 cvs tag -b DEV1

Remember that this does not change your locally checked out working
directory to the new tag automatically, it only creates the branch
within the CVS repository.

=head2 Setup the development catalog

Now we have a branch in CVS, but we need to tie it to something in the
real world, namely, an Interchange catalog.

Importing the catalog

Like we did in I<Integrating CVS with Interchange>, you must make
another copy of your catalog for use as the development version.  Some
would like to keep the orders/, logs/, and other directories the same,
but I prefer to start with a clean slate, especially since I don't
plan on having any customers visit the development site.  (In fact,
you can restrict who can access the development URL using the Apache
C<<DirectoryE<gt> allow from...> directive).

Checkout source code

 cd /var/lib/interchange
cvs co -d foundation_dev foundation

Copy any other needed directories to complete the catalog

Depending on how complete your catalog is in CVS, you may need to
create or copy directories/files.

 cd /var/lib/interchange/foundation
cp -a catalog.cfg orders/*   \
        /var/lib/interchange/foundation_dev

B<Note: >A lot of the following steps are performed by the
/usr/local/interchange/bin/makecat script, but here is how to do it
manually:

Setting up a separate database

Most often, I find it profitable to make use of a second database for
the development catalog, rather than having both catalogs reference
the same database (especially if the first catalog is live).

Create a second database

Use the means of your database platform to create a separate database.
 For example, PostgreSQL users might do something like:

createdb foundation_dev

Populate the database

You can rely on the catalogs internal products/*.txt data to generate
the database tables and populate them, or you can export another
catalog's database and import it for the development catalog, like the
example below for PostgreSQL users.

 pg_dump foundation  > ~/foundation.dump
psql foundation_dev < ~/foundation.dump

Copy the catalog support files

 #Must be root
su - root

#Copy HTML
cd /var/www/html/
cp -a foundation foundation_dev

#Copy CGI
cd /var/www/cgi-bin
cp -a foundation foundation_dev

Configure the Interchange daemon

Perform the necessary modifications to F<interchange.cfg>.  For
example:

 /usr/local/interchange/interchange.cfg:
Catalog foundation     /var/lib/interchange/foundation     /cgi-bin/foundation
Catalog foundation_dev /var/lib/interchange/foundation_dev /cgi-bin/foundation_dev

Configure the catalog specifics

The development catalog will differ at least a little bit from the
standard catalog, such as in the CGI_URL and database parameters.  You
can also modify/add the foundation_dev/variable.txt instead of the
following.

 /var/lib/interchange/catalog.cfg:
Variable CGI_URL   /cgi-bin/foundation_dev
Variable IMAGE_DIR /foundation_dev/images
Variable SQLDSN    dbi:Pg:dbname=foundation_dev
Variable SQLDB     foundation_dev

Now you can restart interchange to make your changes take effect.

=head2 Splitting updates on commit by tag

Setup CVS so that when you commit to the DEV1 branch, only the
development (foundation_dev) catalog will be updated.  And when you
commit with no tags (HEAD branch), the live (foundation) catalog
will be updated.  Here is an example F<loginfo>.  The C<-r <tagE<gt>>
may be used just in case your environment is such that the tags may be
changed by other sources.

 $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/loginfo:
^foundation      (date; cat; (sleep 1; cd /var/lib/interchange/foundation_dev; cvs -q up -d; cd /var/lib/interchange/foundation; cvs -q up -d) &) >> $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/updatelog 2>&1
ALL     /usr/bin/cvs-log     $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/commitlog $USER "%{sVv}"

=head2 Using new branches

To use your new branch, checkout a working copy of the source with the
correct tag specified.  For example:

 cvs co -P -r DEV1

Then make change to one of the files, and commit it.  The change
should show on your development catalog, but not your live catalog.

=head2 Merging

When you want to merge a change that you have made on your development
branch into your stable branch, there are many ways that you can do
it.  One would be to :

=over 4

=over 8

=item *

Make a change in the development branch (DEV1) and commit it.

=item *

Copy the development-tagged file to a temporary name

=item *

Update to the live version (HEAD)

=item *

Overwrite the live (HEAD) version of the file with your temporary one

=item *

Commit the result

=item *

Update back to the development version (DEV1)

=back

=back

I do the above so often that I have written a TCL script for WinCVS
that will automatically perform the above steps.  And similar shell
scripts can probably be easily written to match your development
environment.

The above seems to be the easiest way, to me.  However, there are
other alternatives detailed in the CVS manual in chapter 5, "Branching
and merging", that I highly recommend for reading.  One method
involves specifying the last version that has already been merged into
the live branch using a specific version number, date, relative time,
or special purpose tag.

=head1 Tools of the trade

This is the productivity tips section, which will hopefully help you
to be able to get more done in less time.

=head2 Workstation interchange installation

Not all developers work on Linux workstations, many use Apples
(graphics designers and html gurus tend to, I've found), and many use
Windows.  This means that many developers have the extra step of
uploading their changes to a Unix server where Interchange is running
in order to see their changes.

The remedy to that is to setup an interchange server on your
workstation, or any location that has direct access to the CVS source
files.  I'll explain:

The interchange server that runs where the CVS server is (that we
setup earlier) can be seen as the gathering point for all the
developers.  However, each developer may run as many interchange
daemons as he/she requires in a local context for the purpose of
seeing the changes made before uploading them via CVS.

For example, Bob could setup another interchange catalog on the same
server as the CVS, (e.g. foundation-bob).  To get direct access to
those files (rather than FTP), Bob could use NFS mounts (if Bob's
workstation is Linux) or SMB mounts using Samba if his workstation is
a Windows variant.  Any way that Bob can get direct access to the
files will save him some time (by cutting out the "upload" from the
"edit->upload->test" development cycle).  One could even use Vmware to
run a Linux server on your Windows workstation.

B<Note: >You can now use the cygwin compatibility confirmed in
Interchange versions 4.7.6 and above to run Interchange right on your
Windows workstation.

The result will be that you can modify the files with your favorite
text editor and see the results immediately through your local
catalog.  Setting up the catalog initially is quite easy.  Just follow
the same steps used to setup the CVS catalog.  Which is:

=over 4

=item *

Stop interchange.

=item *

bin/makecat a new catalog.

=item *

Checkout from CVS into a new CVS catalog directory and link the
images/ directory.

=item *

Move any needed files back into the CVS catalog directory.

=item *

Make modifications to products/variable.txt and catalog.cfg (e.g.
CGI_URL, HOSTNAME, DBI_USER, DBI_PASSWORD).

=item *

Restart interchange.

=back

One aspect of this local configuration is managing the differences
between the main interchange daemon which runs on the CVS server and
the local interchange daemon.  The differences are probably hostname,
database information, etc.  That will all need to be managed (usually
through catalog.cfg entries) and database exports & imports (i.e. the
postgres pg_dump command).

Another thing that you might have noticed at this point is all the
files that are modified locally by the interchange daemon will report
? or M when you run an update.  This can be handled with
F<CVSROOT/cvsignore> and $CVSIGNORE, which are beyond the scope of
this document.

=head2 Mailserver for CVS updates

To setup a mailserver for CVS updates, first download and install
mailman.  For Red Hat systems, the following RPM could be used:

=over 4

=item *

L<ftp://speakeasy.rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/7.1/en/powertools/i386/RedHat/RPMS//mailman-2.0.1-2.i386.rpm>

=back

After installing, read the following information about Mailman and
what needs to be done after installation (taken from the RPM meta
data):

"Mailman is software to help manage email discussion lists, much like
Majordomo and Smartmail. Unlike most similar products, Mailman gives
each mailing list a web page, and allows users to subscribe,
unsubscribe, etc. over the web. Even the list manager can administer
his or her list entirely from the web. Mailman also integrates most
things people want to do with mailing lists, including archiving, mail
<-> news gateways, and so on.

When the package has finished installing, you will need to:

=over 4

=item *

Run F</var/mailman/bin/mmsitepass> to set the mailman administrator
password.

=item *

Edit F</var/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py> to customize mailman's
configuration for your site.

=item *

Modify the sendmail configuration to ensure that it is running and
accepting connections from the outside world (to ensure that it runs,
set "DAEMON=yes" in /etc/sysconfig/sendmail, ensuring that it accepts
connections from the outside world may require modifying
/etc/mail/sendmail.mc and regenerating sendmail.cf), and

=item *

Add these lines:

  ScriptAlias /mailman/ /var/mailman/cgi-bin/

=back
  Alias /pipermail/ /var/mailman/archives/public/
  <Directory /var/mailman/archives>
    Options +FollowSymlinks
  </Directory>

to F</etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf> to configure your web server.

Users upgrading from previous releases of this package may need to
move their data or adjust the configuration files to point to the
locations where their data is."

Then run /var/mailman/bin/newlist and follow the directions from
there.

=head2 Locally mapped source code for a network IC server

This is useful mostly to Windows users, since Linux users can just as
easily run IC daemons on their own workstation as they can a separate
server.

The idea is to have the IC server use its own files and directories
for things that won't be edited and modified locally, but reference a
samba directory or NFS directory for things that will (such as
F<pages/>, F<templates/>, etc.).

Mount the samba or NFS directory

C<smbmount <...E<gt>> or C<mount -t nfsfs <...E<gt>>

The following script uses two directories (source and destination) to
create symlinks for the commonly modified source directories of
Interchange.

 export S=/mnt/nfs/foundation
export D=/var/lib/interchange/foundation
F=db; ln -s $S/$F $D/$F
F=dbconf; ln -s $S/$F $D/$F
F=etc; ln -s $S/$F $D/$F
F=images; ln -s $S/$F $D/$F
F=pages; ln -s $S/$F $D/$F
F=special_pages; ln -s $S/$F $D/$F
F=templates; ln -s $S/$F $D/$F

This will leave you with a working catalog that can be quickly
modified (since your editor can access the local copy), while
interchange has to do the work of going over the SMB or NFS
connection.

=head2 jEdit - a good editor with Interchange/HTML/perl colorization and CVS

I have been quite impressed with jEdit (L<http://www.jedit.org>, and
open source editor that is written in java and runs on most platforms.

I use the interchange.xml language definition written by Chris
Jesseman I<chris@sitemajic.net>, which is available from
L<http://www.sitemajic.net/jedit/>.  With this, jEdit automatically
colors HTML, perl, AND many interchange tags very intelligently.

Further, jEdit has a CVS plugin, written by Ben Sarsgard
I<bsarsgard@vmtllc.com>, and available at:
L<http://www.vmtllc.com/~bsarsgard/jedit.html>.  This plugin allows
you to diff, update, and commit right from the editor.

=head2 Seperate servers for development and live catalogs

If you have the luxury of seperate server ardware for the development
and live catalogs, you might find the following utility helpful:

=over 4

=item *

CVSviaFTP (L<http://www.cvshome.org/dev/addoncvsftp.html>) - from the
CVS Add-ons page (L<http://www.cvshome.org/dev/addons.html>).

=back

It allows one to have a given CVS module automatically publish each
update to an FTP server, which could serve as the live server.  Or one
could could use it if your CVS installation is only local and you
could use it to upload your changes to your production server.

Credits

=over 4

=item *

B<Jon Jensen>: Thanks for helping me get going on the SDF format
already used by the Interchange documentation, and fixing some SDF
syntax errors.

=item *

B<Mike Heins & all who have contributed to the success of
Interchange>: Thanks for following the Way Of The Source, for quality
programming, and for helping to making IC something to write about.

=item *

Thanks to the countless others who have written the CVS documentation
that is available online, which was my only source for learning CVS.

=back

Document history

=over 4

=item *

May 2001.  Conceived and written by Dan Browning.

=item *

July 19, 2001.  First draft complete, first public release.

=back

Resources

CVS Documentation

Here are some resources for learning more about CVS.  I have ranked
them by the order of usefulness, which is of course, objective.

=over 4

=item *

Karl Fogel's CVS book L<http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/>

=item *

The official CVS manual L<http://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/>

=item *

The official CVS FAQ L<http://faq.cvshome.org/>

=item *

The official CVS homepage L<http://www.cvshome.org>

=item *

Info-CVS mailing list L<http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-cvs>

=item *

CVS FAQ 2 L<http://www.cs.utah.edu/dept/old/texinfo/cvs/FAQ.txt>

=item *

Sean Dreilinger's CVS Version Control for Web Site Projects
L<http://durak.org/cvswebsites/>

=item *

Pascal Molli's CVS reference site
L<http://www.loria.fr/~molli/cvs-index.html>

=item *

CVS Tutorial
L<http://cellworks.washington.edu/pub/docs/cvs/tutorial/cvs_tutorial_1.html>

=item *

CVS Tutorial 2
L<http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~dbutler/tutorials/winter96/cvs/>

=item *

RedHat CVS pserver setup guide L<http://www.michael-amorose.com/cvs/>

=item *

CVS Add-ons L<http://www.cvshome.org/dev/addons.html>

=back

CVS Server Software

=over 4

=item *

CVS RPM download (Red Hat 7.1) 
L<ftp://speakeasy.rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/7.1/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/cvs-1.11-3.i386.rpm>

=item *

Source tarballs links can can be found at cvshome.org.

=back

CVS Client Software

There are a variety of client access methods for using cvs on your
development box.

=over 4

=item *

There are some great graphical clients for Linux, Windows, and Mac at
L<http://www.cvsgui.org>.  These also give you the same access to all
the command line cvs commands.

=item *

jCVS is a great cross-platform graphical cvs client available at
L<http://www.jcvs.org>.

=item *

jEdit is a great cross-platform text editor written in java, which not
only has a CVS module that allows you to commit (upload) files
directly from the editor, but also has a interchange markup language
(and perl language) colorizer/parser.  It is available from
L<http://www.jedit.org>.

=back

 ________________________________________

Copyright 2001 Dan Browning <danpb@mail.com>.  Freely redistributable
under terms of the GNU General Public License.