Codeville - News

NEWS

7/13/2007: Version 0.8.0 is out!

New in this release:

Remember commit message and autofill it on next attempt if commit fails
fixed: catch requests for non-existent diffs
fixed: error handling cleanup in networking code
fixed: Windows-specific networking fixes
fixed: binary file corruption on Windows with 'construct'
fixed: glob expansion with 'describe -d'
fixed: renaming corner case involving directories, renaming and deleting
fixed: files renamed out of a deleted directory on another branch were marked as a name conflict
fixed: use case-insensitive regexps for post-commit hooks because the config parser lowercases everything
fixed: filesystem timestamp precision problems
fixed: Python 2.5 fixes

These fixes have been collecting for a while. Now you all get to enjoy them too.

The version number has been changed to reflect that the currect code is stable, yet is still missing some features which would be necessary for a 1.0 release

2/27/2006: Version 0.1.16 is out!

New in this release:

Allow 'edit' to take --id
fixed: worked around slightly malformed history with respect to edits and deletes
fixed: merges of edits and deletes should be explicit in changesets

Just a few cleanups, nothing too major.

2/23/2006: Version 0.1.15 is out!

New in this release:

Relax restriction of delete and content merges introduced in previous release so we do not have to rewrite history yet
skip compilation of winrandom.pyd if python 2.4 is installed (Windows only)
fixed: independent deletes should merge implicitly
fixed: server does not rebuild when there are empty branches
fixed: bug which caused all sorts of weird and bad symptoms related to renames
fixed: traceback on checkout from a keyboard interrupt
fixed: reworked how comments are handled to really deal with locales correctly

All bugfixes here, no new features.

12/25/2005: Version 0.1.14 is out!

New in this release:

Allow specifying files by id for several commands
Quoting of CDVDIFF on Windows to allow diff programs with spaces
Quick hack to preserve execute permissions during update
Preserve ownership of the password file when using 'cdvpasswd'
Partial subcommand matching, things like 'cdv di' and 'cdv up' now work
'cdvserver' exits immediately after initialization when given -i
Make 'cdvserver' shut down cleanly on various signals
Force all comments to be encoded in utf8 (automatically converts from local encoding)
'diff.py' works as a standalone program
'commit' accepts -M or --message-file to read commit message from a file
Big optimization to 'annotate'
fixed: delete bugs due to internal ambiguities
fixed: infinite loop when there were blank lines in the commit message
fixed: better cleanup when CDVDIFF fails
fixed: better detection of problems with CDVDIFF
fixed: 'revert' and 'construct' only worked from the root
fixed: cdv-agent died with EINTR
fixed: glob module removed files which don't exist from the command line (Windows only)
fixed: '...' expansion (Windows only)
fixed: 'cdvserver' would accept history with implicit merges
fixed: 'history' traceback when using -c
fixed: 'history' traceback, especially obvious when working serverless

7/18/2005: Version 0.1.13 is out!

New in this release:

Patch from Sudhi Herle so codeville can find modules if not installed in the standard python path
'annotate' feature courtesy of Yoshinori K. Okuji
Patch to allow specifying changeset creation time on command line from Lele Gaifax
Rewritten command line parsing. Options can now be specified anywhere on the command line, long options are supported and there is some basic help
Rewritten history browsing code for simplicity and performance
fixed: creating a new server. Use 'cdvserver -i' to initialize a server
fixed: historical and current name checks, the old code had both false positives and negatives for rename conflicts
fixed: clear out files being edited on 'construct'

5/7/2005: Version 0.1.12 is out!

New in this release:

fixed: obscure issues in cdvupgrade pertaining to convergence
fixed: small issue with changeset generation related to the above issue
fixed: packaging issue which prevented code needed by cdvupgrade from being included
fixed: a few issues with the new unified diff code
fixed: setup.py reflects the new code license
fixed: cdvupgrade fixed so running cdvupgrade on its own output is an identity operation
fixed: cdvupgrade ignores floating history on servers

5/5/2005: Version 0.1.11 is out!

New in this release:

optimized scanning the filesystem to find files which changed for very large projects
introduced 'cdv init' to replace manual 'mkdir CVILLE'
use urandom if present, python 2.4 on windows no longer requires the windrandom.pyd file
'cdv construct' is a little more robust
changed history format to not allow implicit merges. this is a huge performance improvement for histories with lots of branching and merging.
fancy new O(n * log(n)) match code replaces old O(n^3) implementation. makes diffing and changeset generation faster and should also generate better/more readable deltas.
switched to zlib level 6 instead of 9, faster and not much of a space hit
use .cdv as the metadata directory instead of CVILLE
modify cdvupgrade script to work on both clients and servers
version the repository format so the tool doesn't munge an older or newer database by accident
changed license to BSD
fixed: using external diff program on windows causes traceback
fixed: bug where conflicts repeated during later merges
fixed: test for detecting conflicts in files being committed or updated is more strict
fixed: cdvpasswd looks for a config file when passed -f
fixed: 'cdv remove' does not require files to still be present in the filesystem
fixed: small issue when calling revert on an added file

Current items being worked on for the next release and later are:

binary support
big improvements to the latency of the network protocol
smaller CPU and memory improvements
changes to the merge algorithm so that we can prove things about its behaviour

You must run cdvupgrade on any clients and servers for this release. Note that it is much faster to do fresh checkouts than to upgrade clients.

4/13/2005: Mailing list and self-hosting repository

There's a public mailing list up now. If you have questions or want to partipate, send mail to devel at codeville dot org. The todo list is a good place to get started for helping out. More things will be added to it soon. [list info]

The self-hosting repository which has existed since February of 2004 has been opened to the public. URL is cdv://codeville.org/codeville/devel. Username 'anonymous' and the password is blank.

I have to put in a note of thanks here to the folks at Mosuki. They have been using it in production since June of 2004 and done an excellent job of finding bugs, stessing the system and pointing out where the interface needs improvement.

Also of note, the next version will probably be under the BSD license.

1/24/2005: New documentation

A client reference page has been added to the documentation. Thanks to Keith Irwin for writing this up.

If it seems like releases have been slowing down, then you're impatient. Geez, don't I get to take a vacation? In actual fact, they have slowed down a bit. Partially, this is due to stability. Since nothing has been really broken, I've been working on other things. Some architectural design work has also been happening behind the scenes. The next release will require a history rewrite in order to address some non-critical, long standing bugs and to regain some performance. Assuming that is as stable as the recent release, I will get back to adding all those planned useful features.

12/11/2004: Version 0.1.10 is out!

Un*x shell style filename expansion on windows
'rebuild' can be done from a given changenumber
'last-modified' can be done from a given changenumber
'update' recognizes repository URLs of the format 'cdv://server/{changenumber}'
'diff' can now take 'local' as either first or second -r argument
'diff' does not display diffs for files which exist on only 1 side by default
'diff' takes -N switch to show diffs for files which exist on only 1 side
fixed: critical bug where an invalid merge was generated and not caught by the server
fixed: locking bug on server when files are deleted
fixed: traceback when committing from windows
fixed: all files show up as modified after doing 'construct'
fixed: server sending responses out of order
fixed: merge done by 'update' was sometimes incorrect
fixed: 'update -d' not pulling in diffs
fixed: CVILLE directory could not be at the root of the filesystem
fixed: 'diff -r repo' caused traceback
fixed: 'revert' on a file deleted from the local filesystem caused traceback

The critical bug is somewhat difficult to trigger, so it is unlikely that others have run into it. If you see tracebacks with 'merge error', this is what happened. Unfortunately, you have to figure out where it happened and throw away all the changes after that. Apologies, this is the first time something like this has happened in about 8 months.

In this release, the bug is mostly worked around. A proper fix will be in the next release. It will also fix some nuisance bugs with the merge algorithm and eliminate the false positives when doing 'history' on specific files. Potentially, performace will be better, as well.

Running 'rebuild' is required after upgrading.

Documentation is imminent. I promise.

9/21/2004: Version 0.1.9 is out!

Allow user to be specified on client command line via -u
Server port is configurable via the config file or -o on the command line (-p is already being used, I need to switch to long opts)
Server catches exceptions and only shuts down the offending connection, rather than exiting
'commit' takes -b for backup, makes it not generate a new changeset
'history' accepts filenames on the command line
New command 'heads' shows currents heads in the client
New command 'last-modified' gives the last change to modify a file
Server doesn't revalidate changes already committed to other repositories, bedtter performance for branching and merging
fixed: bad changesets being generated for some merge cases
fixed: merging a change with its ancestor caused traceback
fixed: locking bug on failed commit
fixed: 'add' of CVILLE directory issued warning but did the add anyway
fixed: 'diff' with ... tries to diff files not open for edit

The first 2 bugs caused significant problems in the previous release for branching and merging. Otherwise, this is mainly a small cleanup release.

The new feature of 'history' only showing changes for files you're interested in will occasionally give a false positive match. This will be fixed in a future release. It will also show changes in which the file was merged but not directly modified.

8/12/2004: Version 0.1.8 is out!

Removed all significant sources of recursion, should handle long histories now
'history' shows date of commit now, instead of date of changeset creation
'describe' takes -d option, which shows a diff. Any additional arguments are considered filenames for which you want to see diffs
Better auxiliary data structure construction for better performance
Batch of micro-optimizations
New commands 'print_history' and 'print_dag' for dumping graphviz parseable graphs
Several commands including 'diff' and 'commit' operate in offline mode if no repository is set
Any command which took a changeset number can now also take a repository URL
Implemented a fairly fragile 'construct' command to bring your client to a particular history point.
fixed: comment lost when merging back to a branch which has had no subsequent changes
fixed: reverting a file which has been deleted from the filesystem
fixed: rare case where commit fails with message 'unfilled line'
fixed: 'update -d' actually works
fixed: a few minor tracebacks and wrong return values
fixed: password changing works again
fixed: little endian ints don't string sort properly

WARNING: The last bug fix requires a rebuild. Run 'rebuild' in your clients and start the server with -r the first time you run it.

WARNING: Be careful with the 'construct' command! It will throw away all your local changes without asking. It is also pretty fragile. Cleanup will happen for the next release.

Overall, this release eliminates roughly 30% of the CPU work.

As mentioned briefly above, there is now an offline mode. This is automatic when no repository is set. 'commit' will always be run with the -n switch, 'diff' will diff against the last commit, etc.

7/21/2004: Quick bugfix release 0.1.7.1 pushed.
There was a dumb bug which caused a traceback when using the internal diff in the previous release. Also a server traceback on post-commit actions.

7/20/2004: Version 0.1.7 is out!

Only check for repository being set when necessary
'diff' takes files to diff on command line
Better temp file naming when using external diff program
Slightly improved command line parsing
'status' now supports -v, which will show extra and missing files via '??' and '!!'
Support for '...' wildcard expansion in all commands taking filenames, means recursive subdirectory scan
Regular expression list to ignore for 'add' (wildcard expansion only) and 'status -v'
More XML elements in post-commit
fixed: committing to unknown repository caused stack trace (introduced in 0.1.6)
fixed: 'revert' when result has conflicts
fixed: 'edit' can only apply to files, not directories
fixed: cdv-agent doesn't delete socket when using -a
fixed: cdv-agent doesn't work on platforms without poll(), such as OS X
fixed: eval `cdv-agent` hangs
fixed: check server post-commit patterns on startup
fixed: cleanup of bsddb/bsddb3 loading
fixed: traceback on unknown or non-unique change from user
fixed: traceback in 'update' when directory deleted which is not empty locally

Lot's of polish has been done recently, I'll be back to core features pretty soon. And documentation. Really. I promise.

Work done on supporting wildcard expansion will, probably in the next release, allow glob expansion for those poor souls using Windows without a shell to do it for them.

The list of regular expressions to ignore should be in the file CVILLE/ignore. One per line. They must match the entire path name of the file to apply. So if you want to ignore all files ending with ~, you would say '.*~'.

Keep in mind that the ignore patterns are also used by 'add' when expanding the '...' wildcard. You may still add files ignored by the expressions by explicitly naming them on the command line.

7/6/2004: Version 0.1.6 is out!

Only ship sample cdvserver.conf. Prevents overwriting previous config.
Retry login a few times before failing
Verbose mode for 'history' via -v
'history' command -m changed to -n
'history' now supports -s # to skip displaying the first # changes
'history' is relative to default (or named) repository
Include a cdv-agent so people don't have to type their passwords so much
Changes to the crypto code. Fixes and changes to allow the agent to work
cdvpasswd reads the config file now
cdvserver rereads password file when it changes, no longer requires restart
The various commands give return values
Added a "merged files" section to 'status' and 'commit' during merge operations
Better UI for 'update'. View is similar to 'status' and sorts files
Turned a bunch of command line errors into warnings
fixed: vi unhappy when /tmp is a symlink
fixed: modify file then delete bug
fixed: merge-only changes sometimes didn't show in 'history'

The new agent supports exactly the same command line interaction as ssh-agent. It's basically transparent. If the enironment variables are set, then clients will only ask for a password if they can't log in using the agent. The password is then automatically added to the agent.

There's no way the agent will work on windows. At least for now, sorry.

Because of the crypto changes, it is not possible to mix and match new and old clients and servers.

6/18/2004: Version 0.1.5 is out!

Server acts like a real server. See server reference for more details.
Server allows commands to be run after each commit
'commit' pops up an editor if no comment given on command line, obeys CDVEDITOR and EDITOR environment variables, in that order
'commit' editor allows you to trim the list of files to commit
'commit' accepts files to commit on the command line
'history' view small UI cleanusp
'history' takes -m #, to limit the number of changes shown
'describe' UI cleanup
'diff' sorts files for output
'diff' supports external diff programs via the CDVDIFF environment variable
Report useful network error messages
fixed: rebuilding client and server left buggy history cruft
fixed: anonymous user should not be able to change password
fixed: 'diff' throws exception sometimes when diffing between 2 branches
fixed: 'revert -a' leaves files open for edit
fixed: 'remove' on a tree of files would return errors due to ordering
fixed: 'update' after file added and removed remotely
fixed: 'update' after multiple files removed remotely
fixed: 'commit' after file modified then removed locally
fixed: DNS failure throws exception
fixed: 'update' on windows spewed \r's all over files open for edit

Be sure to read the server reference, there are significant changes.

Python 2.3 is now required. There's too much useful stuff in there and I'm only going to use more of it in the future.

6/8/2004: Version 0.1.4 is out!

Server option -r for reconstructing support data structures on startup
Server option -b for backup server mode
'rebuild' command in client for reconstructing support data structures
'is_ancestor' command in client, tells whether arg1 is an ancestor of arg2
Small cleanups
'remove' supports more than 1 file
'history' option -h for user-specified head
'update' option -d for pulling in changes without merging them (does not affect local files or history)
Catch generic exception in client and shut down cleanly
fixed: modifying file while merging fails
fixed: bad indexing structure creation prevents updating
fixed: traceback on update when there are conflicts in local files
fixed: tracebacks in various commands when file is removed from local filesystem
fixed: touched but unmodified files are erroneously included in changesets
fixed: server traceback when updating from non-existent repository
fixed: CVILLE is a reserved filename at any depth in the tree
fixed: removing a directory which isn't empty
fixed: renaming over existing local file
fixed: 'rename' second argument directory

Once again, mostly a bugfix release. Most of the new features implemented were in support of bug-fixing activities.

When upgrading, you will need to run the server with the -r switch the first time. You will also have to run

cdv rebuild

in all clients.

The server now supports a backup mode. When started with -b, only updates from other servers can be committed. In addition, only incremental backups on an existing backup are allowed. The way to use a backup server is create repositories as usual, then in a client update from the repository you want to backup, then commit to the backup server repository.

5/27/2004: Version 0.1.3 is out!

fixed: windows file problems
fixed: reusing names of deleted files
fixed: commit ignored certain types of diffs
fixed: files marked as editted but no actual changes caused traceback
fixed: files remain locked on server after commit error
fixed: spurious conflicts when lines removed from beginning or end of file
fixed: 'revert' on windows
fixed: traceback when no default repository set
Catch generic exceptions in server and shut down cleanly
Skip some unnecessary work on update
Use /dev/urandom instead of /dev/random
Confirm new password when changing passwords

This is largely a bugfix release. Notably, this one should be useful under Windows. You will still have to execute as:

C:\Python23\python.exe C:\Python23\Scripts\cdv.py ...

Wildcard expansion doesn't work on Windows yet.

A fairly elegant cherry-picking scheme has been worked out, but will have to wait until more of the basic functionality is implemented.

I have upgraded my machine and am now using python 2.3. From now on, the rpm packages I make available will be for python 2.3. Please report problems with python 2.2 to me, as the current plan is to continue supporting it.

4/19/2004: Version 0.1.2 is out!

Large performance improvements, works much better on large projects now
A crude "describe" command
Explicit edit mode, user specifies which files are modified instead of codeville detecting it automatically (not on by default)
Windows port
Better overlapping of CPU work with waiting on the network
Better feedback to the user during update

Old clients will no longer work, the backend format has changed. Neither will old servers. To convert your server, first create a new directory where the new server will reside. Then run:

cdvupgrade old_server_dir/ new_server_dir/

Then copy over the codeville_repository and passwd files.

3/3/2004: New release version 0.1.1 is out!

Install script and RPM
New network protocol, authentication is now secure
Password changing through the client
Works out of the box with python 2.3
Much improved status view
Miscellaneous little fixes
License changed to the Open Software License 2.0

3/3/2004: Slides from the Codecon presentation are up.

2/6/2004: If you are using an older version update NOW! There was a serious bug in some of the DAG code. Do not reuse your old repositories or clients. If you need to recover them, let me know and I'll write a conversion tool. The command line syntax for commit and update has changed, please look through the quickstart.

— Bram and Ross