2002-05-15 18:47:42 +01:00
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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 3.0//EN">
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<html lang="en">
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<head>
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<title>CUCC Expedition Handbook - Updating</title>
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</head>
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<body>
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<H1>Updating the website - HOWTO
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</H1>
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<H2>Rationale for having a system at all:
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</H2>
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<P>For years, the website has been built by hand-editing html pages,
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"traditionally" by one or two people, in constant email contact. Obviously
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those people were thoroughly familiar with the locations of all the pages,
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the conventions used for naming files, the style used throughout the site and
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a few conventions for adding things which made the site easier to maintain.
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There are also a few odd tools written to hack from one format (such as a
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scanned journal page) to another which those users were happy with (but which
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may not be useful for anyone else - typically written in BBC Basic on an
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Acorn machine :-). The survey dataset was maintained in much the same way,
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though a lot more of that work was done actually on expedition, and therefore
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by a lot more people.</p>
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<p>This work becomes quite onerous when neither of the two usual maintainers
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went on expo this year, and in any case, it is usually far better for the
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people who actually explored the cave to integrate their stuff into the
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existing cave descriptions. To make this easier (indeed, possible !), both
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the web pages and the survey data are now held in a CVS repository, which
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means lots of people can edit different parts (even different parts of the
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same file) at the same time without causing chaos, and a record is kept of
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who changed what, and why.
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<p>This how-to guide is split into two parts - one for those who have never used
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CVS before, and one for everyone, outlining the structure of the site and the
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few conventions used within it. It is still possible for you to contribute to
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the updating of the site without learning CVS, by sending changes or fault
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reports (as plain text) to one of the regular maintainers - it is not one of
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the aims of this system to exclude non-computer-nerds, just to reduce the
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computer-nerds' workload :-)
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<H2>The CVS bit</H2>
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<!-- Written 2001-10-08 to 2001-10-12, Andy Waddington -->
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<p>This bit should not change significantly with structural change to the
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website (such as serving it all via PHP from a database). I hope it is all
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clear - it was written in parallel with my own learning how to use CVS. It
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may be verbose, but I hope that writing it this way means that it is low on
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omissions.
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<H3>CVS Rationale:</H3>
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<p>The problem with having more than one or two people do the work is that it
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generates increasing amounts of email to ensure that people don't update old
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versions of pages, and throw away someone else's recent work. The solution to
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all this is to put the entire site into a system called "Concurrent Version
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System" under which lots of people can make changes, all of which are safely
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merged together without losing any changes. Just occasionally, the system
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will detect that two people have changed the same bit of text in conflicting
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ways, and it is then up to them to sort it out, but this is a great
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improvement over what has gone before.
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<H3>How does it work ?</H3>
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<p>There is a central CVS repository, from which someone needing to do updates
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can "check out" a copy of the page they want to change. They then make the
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changes or additions required, and "commit" the new page back into the
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system. The system keeps a record of all such changes, with a log message
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in which you should say why the change was made (the system knows who you
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are and when you commited the change, so you don't need to tell it that).
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<p>In order to join in the work, the central CVS repository needs to know
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about you, so it can allow you to commit changes into the system (and thus
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to stop random hackers replacing cave surveys with redirects to a porn
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site, or whatever).
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<H2>Becoming a website updater</H2>
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<H3>Software requirements</H3>
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<p>You need a system which has a CVS client and supports SSL, so that you can
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log in without sending a password in clear text over the internet. You need
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an editor with which you are happy to edit web pages. Ideally this will
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NOT be one of the commercial WYSIWYG web editors which add whole loads of
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guff to your webpage in a manner that you don't see (and which, incidentally,
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makes the pages vastly harder to maintain for the next person who comes
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along with a basic html editor, not to mention making the pages load more
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slowly and typically work in fewer browsers). Most of us use basic
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text editors with extensions that make editing html easier. The easiest
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way to get all this is to have a Linux machine, since most distributions
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have all the tools you need ready built in. The rest of this page assumes
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that you are doing all this on a recent Linux system. There are a few
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useful links for those using Mac, RISC OS or even Windows machines along
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with the links to more detailed documentation <a href="#links">at the end of
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this page.</a> The cvs machine itself is a Linux box, and some of the
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commands you need to use involve typing at the command line on that machine,
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so some familiarity with Unix/Linux will make you feel more at home.
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<p>The CVS repository is on a machine called cvs.survex.com, so you need to get
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(from Mark Shinwell, at present) a username and password. If you are told
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these via email, the first thing you will need to do is change the password,
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using ssh:<br>
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<TT>ssh <username>@cvs.survex.com passwd</TT>
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<p>this is three parts "ssh" says to open an SSL connection
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"<username>@cvs.survex.com" says which user on what machine to connect to
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"passwd" is the command you are going to execute on that machine, as that user,
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in this case a command to change your password.
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<p>this will ask for the existing password to open the connection to the cvs
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machine (this allows the "ssh <username>@cvs.survex.com" to happen), then
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ask for it again (to validate the passwd command). Then you need to type
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your new password twice (second time to confirm that you really typed what
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you thought the first time), and should then tell you that the password was
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updated OK. You will need a password made up of mixed uppercase and
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lowercase letters, digits and punctuation, and not apparently based on any
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dictionary word. This will make it a real pain to remember and type, but we
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get round that in the next step:
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<p>Generate a public/private keypair to do authentication automatically.
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With recent versions of openssh, you need to type<br>
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<TT>ssh-keygen -t dsa</TT>
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<p>doeswith older versions, you may find that "-t" is not a valid option, in
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which case<br>
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<TT>ssh-keygen -d
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</TT>
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<p>does the same thing. Either way, it will suggest a place to store the
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keypair (~/.ssh/id-dsa) which you should accept. This needs to be kept
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secure (so don't generate the keypair and keep it on a publically
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accessible machine, for example).
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<p>We want to force ssh to use protocol 2, but in a typical distribution,
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it tries protocol 1 first - this will oblige you to type your password
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every time, which is a pain. You can change this globally, for everyone,
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by altering /etc/ssh/ssh_config but it is probably best to alter it for
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just the user you will be when doing the CVS commands. Create a file
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~/.ssh/config containing the lines<br>
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<TT># Make sure we use protocol 2 to avoid tedious password typing:<br>
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Host cvs.survex.com<br>
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Protocol 2</TT>
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<p>Now copy the public key to the server. One thing that might trip you up is
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that the directory ~/.ssh may not exist on the remote machine. To create it
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2002-05-15 19:08:41 +01:00
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and copy the key:<br>
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2002-05-15 18:47:42 +01:00
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<TT>ssh <username>@cvs.survex.com mkdir ~/.ssh<br>
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scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub <username>@cvs.survex.com:.ssh/authorized_keys2<br>
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</TT>
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<p>(note the nasty American spelling here - easy to mistype if you're English)-:
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Those commands will ask for your password again, but that should be the last
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time you'll need to enter it on that machine. Having done all that, you
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should now be able to do<br>
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<TT>ssh cvs.survex.com</TT>
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<p>without being asked for a password. That would get you a command line to do
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things on the cvs machine, but for most jobs, you only need to do CVS
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commands on your own machine, so get out of that command line with<br>
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<tt>exit</tt>
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<p>To use the CVS commands on your local machine (for checking out pages
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to edit and commiting them back) you need to tell cvs where the archive
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is. You can include a "-d <username>@cvs.survex.com:/export/cvs" with
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cvs commands (useful if you use cvs on more than one repository), but
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it is usually easier to add<br>
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<TT>export CVSROOT=<username>@cvs.survex.com:/export/cvs</TT>
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<p>to some script that will be executed before you want to use cvs. Easiest
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would usually be ~/.bashrc (assuming your default shell is bash). Also
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add<br>
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<TT>export CVS_RSH=ssh</TT>
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<p>You are now ready to get a copy of the page(s) you want to edit. If you
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don't have a copy of the site on CD, it may be easiest to download the
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whole site - having the other pages for context makes life much easier
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if you are maintaining links between pages. Move into a local directory
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where you will edit the pages, I use a tree in my own home directory,
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which, for historical reasons, is called chaos, but you can choose any
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directory where you will have the write-access needed to edit pages:<br>
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<TT>cd ~/chaos</TT><br>
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<TT>cvs checkout expo-www</TT>
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<p>and then move into the directory tree to make your changes. Thus far,
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everything has been at the command line, but often doing the editing
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will be more convenient through a desktop interface. You might find that
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you want to set your file browser *not* to display an html view of the
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files, otherwise you will end up browsing the pages, rather than the
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file tree, which makes editing much harder :-(
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<p>When you have made your changes, you need to check that no-one else
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has changed things in a way which clashes. Its also a good idea to
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keep your own copies of the pages as up-to-date as possible, so at
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the top level of your copy ( ~/chaos in my case ):<br>
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<TT>cvs update</TT>
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<p>If you are unlucky (most likely if you made changes a long time after you
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last ran update) this will tell you about conflicts which you'll need to
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resolve with the other person(s) who made changes. Make sure you do
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resolve these changes, since just committing your version throws away
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the other person's changes from the current version (CVS keeps a record
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of all the changes, so they can be recovered, but it is easier and much
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more polite to resolve the problem through dialogue). Once all is OK<br>
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<TT>cvs commit</TT>
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<p>If you are updating the whole tree like this, it is a good idea to make
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sure you get any new directories and remove any old ones (which doesn't
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happen by default). To do this specify<br>
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<TT>cvs update -Pd</TT>
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<p>You can just update one subdirectory (and everything under it) or an
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individual file by adding its name to the end of the command, such as<br>
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<TT>cvs update expo/smkridge/161</TT><br>
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<TT>cvs commit expo/smkridge/161/france.htm</TT>
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<p>if you create a new page, lets say for a description of a new cave on
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the plateau, 1623/505, it would probably be called 505.htm in the
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plateau subdir. "cvs commit" will not work on files that cvs does not
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know about, so to let cvs know it is there use<br>
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<TT>cvs add expo/plateau/505.htm</TT><br>
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<TT>cvs commit expo/plateau/505.htm</TT>
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<p>cvs works by maintaining DIFFerences between files as they are updated.
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This works on text files, and cvs can convert the line-ending conventions
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on different platforms. If you add a binary file, that sort of translation
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can be extremely bad news, so use "-kb" to tell cvs when adding a binary
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file:
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<TT>cvs add -kb expo/plateau/others/505.png</TT>
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<!-- there is a way to tell the repository to know about some standard
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filename extensions, like .png, .gif, .jpg, and always treat them as
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binaries - we should do this !! -->
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<p>Sometimes, you may find that an unwieldy chunk of cave description needs
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to be split into two or more pages (this happened quite often with 161).
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It is usually clearer to everyone if none of the new files have the same
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name as the old one. So in addition to using "cvs add" to add the new
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pages, you need<br>
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<TT>rm expo/smkridge/161/nowsplit.htm</TT><br>
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<TT>cvs remove expo/smkridge/161/nowsplit.htm<br>
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cvs commit expo/smkridge/161/nowsplit.htm</TT>
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<p>Whenever you do a "cvs commit" you will be asked for a log message, which
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is just some text to help others know what sort of update you were doing.
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So something like "correcting typos" or "added new passages off Puerile
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Humour", "fixing broken links" are the minimum sort of level you need to
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add. It is a good idea to commit files back to the repository one or two
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at a time, so the comments can be relevant to each particular file. It
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is often worth while committing unrelated changes separately, even if
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they affect the same file. For instance, if you correct some typos in one
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page, and link a new photo to several pages, including that same one, it
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is better to commit each set of changes separately. This does take some
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discipline, however, as it is usually just whilst you are making one set of
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changes that you notice the typo, and if you don't change it then and there,
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it gets forgotten. Your call.
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<p>Of course, if you did some major overhaul to a lot of files (like changing
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lots of links after some sort of reorganisation) you'd want to commit them
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all together with a suitable log message. It really is a good idea to
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avoid doing this whilst other people might be editing some of the files,
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as you could spend ages resolving conflicts...
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<H3>Avoiding cocks-up.</H3>
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<p>Running cvs update just before you start editing saves you making changes to
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out-of-date stuff, and committing changes soon after editing saves everyone
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else from working on out-of-date pages. Both of which will save you work
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resolving conflicts later on - but only if *everyone* remembers to do this.
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<p>If you had to leave some editing part way through, and came back to it later,
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its easy to forget what you have finished and what you haven't. Running<br>
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<TT>cvs diff -u</TT>
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<p>will tell you what you changed *from the copy you checked out* (so you
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don't get confused by a list of things which other people have changed in
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the meantime). This helps to avoid leaving things like notes to yourself
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lying around in the file, and should help to avoid failing to update
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links, though that is harder, since you have to notice that a change you
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meant to make hasn't appeared in the list of changes.<br>
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<TT>cvs -n update
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</TT>
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<p>doesn't actually update anything, but tells you what would have happened.
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This is useful at various times, such as for spotting conflicts early on
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whilst you are part way through doing a big update. Changing it to<br>
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<TT>cvs -nq update</TT>
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<p>suppresses some of the less useful output. Files which are marked with
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a "?" are ones which cvs doesn't know about - maybe you haven't "cvs add"ed
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them yet.
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<H3>CVS documentation</H3>
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<p>Obviously, CVS has lots of bells and whistles that you don't need just to
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edit a few web pages. Here are a few links which you might care to look at.
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Many more are accessible via <a href="http://www.cvshome.org/">CVS' home
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page</a>.
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<P>OK, that's how to use CVS. You might now like to read a bit about editing
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the web pages you checked out - there are a few conventions to help to
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maintain a consistent style (although we might change that style soon, as
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soon as we can agree about a new look). Just as in programming, there are
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also a lot of useful things you can do by adding comments (which the end
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reader of the pages won't see).
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<a name="links">Further reading</a>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="http://www.cvshome.org/new_users.html">CVS for new users</a>
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<li><a href="http://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual">Version Management with
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CVS</a> (the official manual)
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<li><a href="http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/">Open Source development with
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CVS</a> (chapters from a book, aimed at programmers, but almost all
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applicable to open source document authors too)
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<li><a href="http://www.cvshome.org/dev/addons.html">CVS Add-ons</a> page
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includes graphical CVS clients for Mac, Windows and, of course, Linux.
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<li>And a <a href="http://gallery.uunet.be/John.Tytgat/cvs/">CVS client
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for RISC OS</a> (but note that this didn't appear to support ssh when this
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page was written (2001-10-12)).
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<li><a href="http://www.durak.org/cvswebsites/">CVS for websites</a>:
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most manuals assume you are using CVS to develop software - this site is
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specific to using CVS to maintain web pages.
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</ul>
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<H2>The website conventions bit</H2>
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<p>This is likely to change with structural change to the site, with style
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changes which we expect to implement and with the method by which the
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info is actually stored and served up.
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<p>... and it's not written yet, either :-)
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<ul>
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<li>Structure
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<li>Info for each cave
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<li>Contents lists & relative links for multi-article publications like
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journals. Complicated by expo articles being in a separate hierarchy.
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<li>Translations
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<li>Other people's work - the noinfo hierarchy.
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</ul>
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</body>
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</html>
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