11.1 When to commit?
Your group should decide which policy to use regarding
commits. Several policies are possible, and as your
experience with CVS grows you will probably find
out what works for you.
If you commit files too quickly you might commit files
that do not even compile. If your partner updates his
working sources to include your buggy file, he will be
unable to compile the code. On the other hand, other
persons will not be able to benefit from the
improvements you make to the code if you commit very
seldom, and conflicts will probably be more common.
It is common to only commit files after making sure
that they can be compiled. Some sites require that the
files pass a test suite. Policies like this can be
enforced using the commitinfo file
(see section Commitinfo), but you should think twice before
you enforce such a convention. By making the
development environment too controlled it might become
too regimented and thus counter-productive to the real
goal, which is to get software written.
