CVS Conventions

All the normally-ignored files are ignored, most particularly .o, .class, and *~ files. There is some question if .html files should be ignored or checked into the repository. The rationale for checking them in is so that they will be automatically visible in the projects/work directory. The rationale for not checking in is that in the current troff-based documentation system, .html files are generated in the same way as .o and .class files, and hence should be left out of the repository.

At present, the rationale for leaving .html files out of the repository is viewed as more persuasive. In general, any purely generated file should be left out of the repository. The definition of "purely generated" is "generated by some rule(s) in a Makefile". Hence since .html files are 100% generated via make, they are left out of the repository. Also left out of the repository are the symbolic links from .idr files to .ps files of the same root file names, since these links are also generated via make. Leaving out these sym links has the added benefit of not having to deal with check in of sym link files, which is quite problematic in CVS.

Another example of a file to ignore is the .i file generated by gindxbib. To ensure that this file meets the CVS ignore criterion of generation via make, a call to gindxbib should appear in Makefiles when necessary. See for example, the rolodex/requirements/Makefile.