Managing common components with Fossil CVS

Question

I'm a Fossil (and CVS configuration) novice attempting to create and manage a set of distributed Fossil repositories for a Delphi project.

I have the following directory tree on my development machine:

 Projects
     Some Project
     Delphi Components
        LookupListView
     Some Client
        Some Project For Client
        Some Other Project For Client
           Source Code
               Project Resources
               Project Database

I am setting up Fossil version control in order to version and share Projects\Some Client\Some Other Project For Client\Source Code, which contains Delphi 2010 source for a database project.

This project makes use of Projects\Delphi Components\LookupListView which is a Delphi component. I need this code to be included in the versioning system for my project. I will, in theory, need to include it in other Fossil repositories in the future, as well.

If I create my Fossil repository at the Source Code or Some Other Project For Client level, I cannot add any code above that level to my repository. What is the proper way to deal with this? The two solutions that occur to me are

1) Creating a separate repository for LookupListView and make sure that everyone who uses a repository for a project that references it "knows" that they must also get the current version of this project as well. This seems to defeat the purpose of being able to obtain a complete, current version of the project with a single checkout. The problem is magnified because there are other common component dependencies in this project.

2) Establishing my Fossil repository in the Projects directory, so I can check in files from various subfolders. This seems to me to involve an awful lot of extra path-typing when doing adds, and also to impose my directory structure (Some Client\Some Other Project For Client\Source) on the other users of the repository -- in this case, the actual client.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi! I use Git, but my approach can be applied in your situation.

I have one repository for all my components folder. This gives me an ability to get all of them with only few console commands (in case when I reinstall my OS or go to another computer etc.).

Also I have one repository per each of my projects. If some project uses 3rd party controls I create "components" sub-folder and do symbolic links (junctions) of every components set.

This approach have some disadvantages (when you "go back" in commits history of some project, components can be modified too. And if many projects are using same components this could cause some troubles). But I had no issues yet :)