Книга: Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition

12.8.7 Making and Retrieving Snapshots

12.8.7 Making and Retrieving Snapshots

A snapshot of a project is a set of revisions of the project files treated as a unit. Typically, releases are associated with points at which the project's product goes to a customer or other outside evaluator.

When you're working with a subtree of project files and want to define a release of a document or program, you may find it tedious to have to do it by remembering or storing long lists of file revision numbers. Accordingly, most version control systems give you the ability to associate a symbolic release name with all the revisions that make up a release, and then to use that symbolic name later on when naming revisions for retrieval or difference reports.

Bare RCS and CVS both provide this capability. Bare SCCS does not, but VC includes code to simulate it under SCCS. In practice, the difference between native symbolic names and VC's is next to invisible. The only drawback of VC's simulation is that the SCCS tools won't know about symbolic names when you call them outside VC. (Note that this concept doesn't really apply to Subversion, because in that environment every revision is a snapshot of the files and directories comprising the entire module.)

The C-x v s (for vc-create-snapshot) prompts you for a symbolic name. VC then associates this name with the current revision level of every registered file under the current directory.

The symbolic names you create with vc-create-snapshot are also valid arguments to any other VC command that wants a revision number. Symbolic names are especially useful with vc-diff; it means you can compare named releases with each other or with your checked-out work files. The C-x v r (for vc-retrieve-snapshot) command takes a symbolic name and checks out every registered file underneath the current working directory at the revision level associated with the name.

Both the snapshot commands will fail, returning an error and not marking or retrieving any files, if any registered file under the current directory is checked out by anyone. The vc-create-snapshot command fails in order to avoid making a snapshot that, when retrieved later, won't restore the current state completely. It also fails in order to avoid stepping on your work file changes before you've had the chance to check them in or revert them out.

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