CVS mode: keeping track of revision numbers

[Scott Gordon]

I am evaluating new revision control tools for my company and am impressed by Vaults ability to operate in both VSS (Checkout,Edit,Checkin) and CVS (Edit,Merge,Commit) style.

In our company, most of us would prefer the CVS working style, and I have a question about how it is implemented in Vault. Specifically, when you are operating in "CVS mode" how does vault know the revision number of a file in your working folder? Is it stored somewhere in your local work area?

[sterwill]

Vault stores its working folder information in a similar way to CVS. CVS creates a directory named "CVS" inside each of its working folders, and puts some state information there. Vault creates a directory called "_sgvault" in the user's Windows application data folder, one for each working folder, or optionally inside the working folders themselves (you can set this option in the client's Options dialog). Vault also puts its version state there, but also includes full copies of the unmodified files in the working folder itself. These are baseline versions, which it needs to create deltas to send to the server when checking in changes.

Turning ON the option to store working folder information inside the working folders makes cleaning up easier. When you know you're done with a working folder, you can simply delete it, including all the baseline versions and state information that reside in the "_sgvault" directory. Vault has no way of knowing when a user will be finished working with a working folder, so it won't automatically remove files when they're stored in the application data location.