Go to the previous, next section.
This appendix describes how to invoke CVS, and describes in detail those subcommands of CVS which are not fully described elsewhere. To look up a particular subcommand, see section Index.
The overall format of all CVS commands is:
cvs [ cvs_options ] cvs_command [ command_options ] [ command_args ]
cvs
cvs_options
cvs_command
command_options
command_args
There is unfortunately some confusion between
cvs_options and command_options.
`-l', when given as a cvs_option, only
affects some of the commands. When it is given as a
command_option is has a different meaning, and
is accepted by more commands. In other words, do not
take the above categorization too seriously. Look at
the documentation instead.
There are some command_options that are used so
often that you might have set up an alias or some other
means to make sure you always specify that option. One
example (the one that drove the implementation of the
.cvsrc support, actually) is that many people find the
default output of the `diff' command to be very
hard to read, and that either context diffs or unidiffs
are much easier to understand.
The `~/.cvsrc' file is a way that you can add
default options to cvs_commands within cvs,
instead of relying on aliases or other shell scripts.
The format of the `~/.cvsrc' file is simple. The
file is searched for a line that begins with the same
name as the cvs_command being executed. If a
match is found, then the remainder of the line is split
up (at whitespace characters) into separate options and
added to the command arguments before any
options from the command line.
If a command has two names (e.g., checkout and
co), the official name, not necessarily the one
used on the command line, will be used to match against
the file. So if this is the contents of the user's
`~/.cvsrc' file:
log -N diff -u update -P co -P
the command `cvs checkout foo' would have the `-P' option added to the arguments, as well as `cvs co foo'.
With the example file above, the output from `cvs
diff foobar' will be in unidiff format. `cvs diff
-c foobar' will provide context diffs, as usual.
Getting "old" format diffs would be slightly more
complicated, because diff doesn't have an option
to specify use of the "old" format, so you would need
`cvs -f diff foobar'.
In place of the command name you can use cvs to
specify global options (see section Global options). For
example the following line in `.cvsrc'
cvs -z6
causes CVS to use compression level 6
The available `cvs_options' (that are given to the left of `cvs_command') are:
-b bindir
$RCSBIN environment
variable and any precompiled directory. This parameter should be
specified as an absolute pathname.
-d cvs_root_directory
$CVSROOT environment variable. See section The Repository.
-e editor
$CVSEDITOR and $EDITOR environment variables.
-f
-H
-l
-n
-Q
-q
-r
$CVSREAD environment variable is set
(see section All environment variables which affect CVS). The default is to
make working files writable, unless watches are on
(see section Mechanisms to track who is editing files).
-s variable=value
-t
-v
-w
$CVSREAD environment variable.
Files are created read-write by default, unless $CVSREAD is
set or `-r' is given.
-z gzip-level
This section describes the `command_options' that are available across several CVS commands. These options are always given to the right of `cvs_command'. Not all commands support all of these options; each option is only supported for commands where it makes sense. However, when a command has one of these options you can almost always count on the same behavior of the option as in other commands. (Other command options, which are listed with the individual commands, may have different behavior from one CVS command to the other).
Warning: the `history' command is an exception; it supports many options that conflict even with these standard options.
-D date_spec
The specification is sticky when you use it to make a private copy of a source file; that is, when you get a working file using `-D', CVS records the date you specified, so that further updates in the same directory will use the same date (for more information on sticky tags/dates, see section Sticky tags).
A wide variety of date formats are supported by the underlying RCS facilities, similar to those described in co(1), but not exactly the same. The date_spec is interpreted as being in the local timezone, unless a specific timezone is specified. Examples of valid date specifications include:
1 month ago
2 hours ago
400000 seconds ago
last year
last Monday
yesterday
a fortnight ago
3/31/92 10:00:07 PST
January 23, 1987 10:05pm
22:00 GMT
`-D' is available with the checkout,
diff, export, history,
rdiff, rtag, and update commands.
(The history command uses this option in a
slightly different way; see section history options).
Remember to quote the argument to the `-D' flag so that your shell doesn't interpret spaces as argument separators. A command using the `-D' flag can look like this:
$ cvs diff -D "1 hour ago" cvs.texinfo
-f
`-f' is available with these commands: checkout,
export, rdiff, rtag, and update.
Warning: The commit command also has a
`-f' option, but it has a different behavior for
that command. See section commit options.
-H
-k kflag
checkout or update commands,
CVS associates your selected kflag with the
file, and continues to use it with future update
commands on the same file until you specify otherwise.
The `-k' option is available with the add,
checkout, diff and
update commands.
-l
Warning: this is not the same as the overall `cvs -l' option, which you can specify to the left of a cvs command!
Available with the following commands: checkout,
commit, diff, export, log,
remove, rdiff, rtag,
status, tag, and update.
-m message
Available with the following commands: add,
commit and import.
-n
Warning: this is not the same as the overall `cvs -n' option, which you can specify to the left of a cvs command!
Available with the checkout, commit, export,
and rtag commands.
-P
checkout, or update. Normally, an empty directory
(one that is void of revision-controlled files) is left alone.
Specifying `-P' will cause these directories to be silently
removed from your checked-out sources. This does not remove the
directory from the repository, only from your checked out copy.
Note that this option is implied by the `-r' or `-D'
options of checkout and export.
-p
checkout and update commands.
-W
import,
and update.
-r tag
tag or rtag command, two special tags are
always available: `HEAD' refers to the most recent version
available in the repository, and `BASE' refers to the
revision you last checked out into the current working directory.
The tag specification is sticky when you use this option
with checkout or update to make your own
copy of a file: CVS remembers the tag and continues to use it on
future update commands, until you specify otherwise (for more information
on sticky tags/dates, see section Sticky tags). The
tag can be either a symbolic or numeric tag.
See section Tags--Symbolic revisions.
Specifying the `-q' global option along with the `-r' command option is often useful, to suppress the warning messages when the RCS history file does not contain the specified tag.
Warning: this is not the same as the overall `cvs -r' option, which you can specify to the left of a cvs command!
`-r' is available with the checkout, commit,
diff, history, export, rdiff,
rtag, and update commands.
Use the add command to create a new file or directory in the
source repository. The files or directories specified with add
must already exist in the current directory (which must have been
created with the checkout command). To add a whole new directory
hierarchy to the source repository (for example, files received
from a third-party vendor), use the import command
instead. See section import--Import sources into CVS, using vendor branches.
If the argument to add refers to an immediate
sub-directory, the directory is created at the correct place in
the source repository, and the necessary CVS administration
files are created in your working directory. If the directory
already exists in the source repository, add still creates
the administration files in your version of the directory.
This allows you to use add to add a particular directory
to your private sources even if someone else created that
directory after your checkout of the sources. You can do the
following:
$ mkdir new_directory $ cvs add new_directory $ cvs update new_directory
An alternate approach using update might be:
$ cvs update -d new_directory
(To add any available new directories to your working directory,
it's probably simpler to use checkout (see section checkout--Check out sources for editing)
or `update -d' (see section update--Bring work tree in sync with repository)).
The added files are not placed in the source repository until you
use commit to make the change permanent. Doing an
add on a file that was removed with the remove
command will resurrect the file, unless a commit command
intervened.
See section Removing files from a module, for an example.
Unlike most other commands add never recurses down
directories. It cannot yet handle relative paths. Instead of
$ cvs add foo/bar.c
you have to do
$ cd foo $ cvs add bar.c
There are only two options you can give to `add':
-k kflag
admin -k
(see section admin options). See section Handling binary files, for
information on using this option for binary files.
-m description
log command displays this description.
The description can be changed using `admin -t'. See section admin--Administration front end for rcs.
If you omit the `-m description' flag, an empty string will be used. You will not be prompted for a description.
To add the file `backend.c' to the repository, with a description, the following can be used.
$ cvs add -m "Optimizer and code generation passes." backend.c $ cvs commit -m "Early version. Not yet compilable." backend.c
This is the CVS interface to assorted administrative RCS
facilities, documented in rcs(1). admin simply passes
all its options and arguments to the rcs command; it does
no filtering or other processing. This command does work
recursively, however, so extreme care should be used.
If there is a group whose name matches a compiled in
value which defaults to cvsadmin, only members
of that group can use cvs admin. To disallow
cvs admin for all users, create a group with no
users in it.
Not all valid rcs options are useful together
with CVS. Some even makes it impossible to use
CVS until you undo the effect!
This description of the available options is based on the `rcs(1)' man page, but modified to suit readers that are more interrested in CVS than RCS.
-Aoldfile
-alogins
-b[rev]
-cstring
$Log$ (see section Keyword substitution).
This is useful for programming languages without
multi-line comments. RCS initially guesses the
value of the comment leader from the file name
extension when the file is first committed.
-e[logins]
-I
-i
-ksubst
cvs update, cvs export, or cvs
checkout overrides this default.
-l[rev]
This can be used in conjunction with the `rcslock.pl' script in the `contrib' directory of the CVS source distribution to provide reserved checkouts (where only one user can be editing a given file at a time). See the comments in that file for details (and see the `README' file in that directory for disclaimers about the unsupported nature of contrib). According to comments in that file, locking must set to strict (which is the default).
-L
-mrev:msg
-Nname[:[rev]]
-nname[:[rev]]
-orange
Due to the way CVS handles branches rev cannot be specified symbolically if it is a branch. See section Magic branch numbers, for an explanation.
Make sure that no-one has checked out a copy of the revision you outdate. Strange things will happen if he starts to edit it and tries to check it back in. For this reason, this option is not a good way to take back a bogus commit; commit a new revision undoing the bogus change instead (see section Merging differences between any two revisions).
-q
-sstate[:rev]
dead state for its own purposes; to
take a file to or from the dead state use
commands like cvs remove and cvs add, not
cvs admin -s.
-t[file]
-t-string
-U
-u[rev]
. by itself.
-Vn
-xsuffixes
First, an example of how not to use the
admin command. It is included to stress the
fact that this command can be quite dangerous unless
you know exactly what you are doing.
The `-o' option can be used to outdate old revisions from the history file. If you are short on disc this option might help you. But think twice before using it--there is no way short of restoring the latest backup to undo this command!
The next line is an example of a command that you would not like to execute.
$ cvs admin -o:R_1_02 .
The above command will delete all revisions up to, and including, the revision that corresponds to the tag R_1_02. But beware! If there are files that have not changed between R_1_02 and R_1_03 the file will have the same numerical revision number assigned to the tags R_1_02 and R_1_03. So not only will it be impossible to retrieve R_1_02; R_1_03 will also have to be restored from the tapes!
If you use the $Log$ keyword and you do
not agree with the guess for comment leader that
CVS has done, you can enforce your will with
cvs admin -c. This might be suitable for
nroff source:
$ cvs admin -c'.\" ' *.man $ rm *.man $ cvs update
The two last steps are to make sure that you get the versions with correct comment leaders in your working files.
Make a working directory containing copies of the
source files specified by modules. You must execute
checkout before using most of the other CVS
commands, since most of them operate on your working
directory.
The modules part of the command are either symbolic names for some collection of source directories and files, or paths to directories or files in the repository. The symbolic names are defined in the `modules' file. See section The modules file.
Depending on the modules you specify, checkout may
recursively create directories and populate them with
the appropriate source files. You can then edit these
source files at any time (regardless of whether other
software developers are editing their own copies of the
sources); update them to include new changes applied by
others to the source repository; or commit your work as
a permanent change to the source repository.
Note that checkout is used to create
directories. The top-level directory created is always
added to the directory where checkout is
invoked, and usually has the same name as the specified
module. In the case of a module alias, the created
sub-directory may have a different name, but you can be
sure that it will be a sub-directory, and that
checkout will show the relative path leading to
each file as it is extracted into your private work
area (unless you specify the `-Q' global option).
The files created by checkout are created
read-write, unless the `-r' option to CVS
(see section Global options) is specified, the
CVSREAD environment variable is specified
(see section All environment variables which affect CVS), or a watch is in
effect for that file (see section Mechanisms to track who is editing files).
Running checkout on a directory that was already
built by a prior checkout is also permitted, and
has the same effect as specifying the `-d' option
to the update command, that is, any new
directories that have been created in the repository
will appear in your work area. See section update--Bring work tree in sync with repository.
These standard options are supported by checkout
(see section Common command options, for a complete description of
them):
-D date
-f
-k kflag
status command can be viewed
to see the sticky options. See section status--Display status information on checked out files.
-l
-n
-P
-p
-r tag
In addition to those, you can use these special command
options with checkout:
-A
-c
-d dir
-j tag
With one `-j' option, merge changes from the ancestor revision to the revision specified with the `-j' option, into the working directory. The ancestor revision is the common ancestor of the revision which the working directory is based on, and the revision specified in the `-j' option.
In addition, each -j option can contain an optional date specification which, when used with branches, can limit the chosen revision to one within a specific date. An optional date is specified by adding a colon (:) to the tag: `-jSymbolic_Tag:Date_Specifier'.
See section Merging.
-N
-s
Get a copy of the module `tc':
$ cvs checkout tc
Get a copy of the module `tc' as it looked one day ago:
$ cvs checkout -D yesterday tc
Warning: The `-f file' option will probably be renamed to `-F file', and `-f' will be given a new behavior in future releases of CVS.
Use commit when you want to incorporate changes
from your working source files into the source
repository.
If you don't specify particular files to commit, all of
the files in your working current directory are
examined. commit is careful to change in the
repository only those files that you have really
changed. By default (or if you explicitly specify the
`-R' option), files in subdirectories are also
examined and committed if they have changed; you can
use the `-l' option to limit commit to the
current directory only.
commit verifies that the selected files are up
to date with the current revisions in the source
repository; it will notify you, and exit without
committing, if any of the specified files must be made
current first with update (see section update--Bring work tree in sync with repository).
commit does not call the update command
for you, but rather leaves that for you to do when the
time is right.
When all is well, an editor is invoked to allow you to
enter a log message that will be written to one or more
logging programs (see section The modules file, and see section Loginfo)
and placed in the RCS history file inside the
repository. This log message can be retrieved with the
log command; See section log--Print out 'rlog' information for files. You can specify the
log message on the command line with the `-m
message' option, and thus avoid the editor invocation,
or use the `-f file' option to specify
that the argument file contains the log message.
These standard options are supported by commit
(see section Common command options, for a complete description of
them):
-l
-n
-R
-r revision
commit also supports these options:
-F file
-f
Force CVS to commit a new revision even if you haven't made any changes to the file. If the current revision of file is 1.7, then the following two commands are equivalent:
$ cvs commit -f file $ cvs commit -r 1.8 file
-f file
Read the log message from file, instead of invoking an editor.
-m message
When you make a major release of your product, you might want the revision numbers to track your major release number. You should normally not care about the revision numbers, but this is a thing that many people want to do, and it can be done without doing any harm.
To bring all your files up to the RCS revision 3.0 (including those that haven't changed), you might do:
$ cvs commit -r 3.0
Note that it is generally a bad idea to try to make the
RCS revision number equal to the current release number
of your product. You should think of the revision
number as an internal number that the CVS package
maintains, and that you generally never need to care
much about. Using the tag and rtag
commands you can give symbolic names to the releases
instead. See section tag--Add a symbolic tag to checked out versions of files and See section rtag--Add a symbolic tag to a module.
Note that the number you specify with `-r' must be larger than any existing revision number. That is, if revision 3.0 exists, you cannot `cvs commit -r 1.3'.
You can commit to a branch revision (one that has an
even number of dots) with the `-r' option. To
create a branch revision, use the `-b' option
of the rtag or tag commands (see section tag--Add a symbolic tag to checked out versions of files
or see section rtag--Add a symbolic tag to a module). Then, either checkout or
update can be used to base your sources on the
newly created branch. From that point on, all
commit changes made within these working sources
will be automatically added to a branch revision,
thereby not disturbing main-line development in any
way. For example, if you had to create a patch to the
1.2 version of the product, even though the 2.0 version
is already under development, you might do:
$ cvs rtag -b -r FCS1_2 FCS1_2_Patch product_module $ cvs checkout -r FCS1_2_Patch product_module $ cd product_module [[ hack away ]] $ cvs commit
This works automatically since the `-r' option is sticky.
Say you have been working on some extremely experimental software, based on whatever revision you happened to checkout last week. If others in your group would like to work on this software with you, but without disturbing main-line development, you could commit your change to a new branch. Others can then checkout your experimental stuff and utilize the full benefit of CVS conflict resolution. The scenario might look like:
[[ hacked sources are present ]] $ cvs tag -b EXPR1 $ cvs update -r EXPR1 $ cvs commit
The update command will make the `-r
EXPR1' option sticky on all files. Note that your
changes to the files will never be removed by the
update command. The commit will
automatically commit to the correct branch, because the
`-r' is sticky. You could also do like this:
[[ hacked sources are present ]] $ cvs tag -b EXPR1 $ cvs commit -r EXPR1
but then, only those files that were changed by you will have the `-r EXPR1' sticky flag. If you hack away, and commit without specifying the `-r EXPR1' flag, some files may accidentally end up on the main trunk.
To work with you on the experimental change, others would simply do
$ cvs checkout -r EXPR1 whatever_module
The diff command is used to compare different
revisions of files. The default action is to compare
your working files with the revisions they were based
on, and report any differences that are found.
If any file names are given, only those files are compared. If any directories are given, all files under them will be compared.
The exit status will be 0 if no differences were found, 1 if some differences were found, and 2 if any error occurred.
These standard options are supported by diff
(see section Common command options, for a complete description of
them):
-D date
CVS can be configured to pass the `-D' option
through to rcsdiff (which in turn passes it on
to diff. GNU diff uses `-D' as a way to
put cpp-style `#define' statements around the output
differences. There is no way short of testing to
figure out how CVS was configured. In the default
configuration CVS will use the `-D date' option.
-k kflag
-l
-R
-r tag
One or both `-r' options can be replaced by a `-D date' option, described above.
Any other options that are found are passed through to
rcsdiff, which in turn passes them to
diff. The exact meaning of the options depends
on which diff you are using. The long options
introduced in GNU diff 2.0 are not yet supported in
CVS. See the documentation for your diff to see
which options are supported.
The following line produces a Unidiff (`-u' flag) between revision 1.14 and 1.19 of `backend.c'. Due to the `-kk' flag no keywords are substituted, so differences that only depend on keyword substitution are ignored.
$ cvs diff -kk -u -r 1.14 -r 1.19 backend.c
Suppose the experimental branch EXPR1 was based on a set of files tagged RELEASE_1_0. To see what has happened on that branch, the following can be used:
$ cvs diff -r RELEASE_1_0 -r EXPR1
A command like this can be used to produce a context diff between two releases:
$ cvs diff -c -r RELEASE_1_0 -r RELEASE_1_1 > diffs
If you are maintaining ChangeLogs, a command like the following just before you commit your changes may help you write the ChangeLog entry. All local modifications that have not yet been committed will be printed.
$ cvs diff -u | less
This command is a variant of checkout; use it
when you want a copy of the source for module without
the CVS administrative directories. For example, you
might use export to prepare source for shipment
off-site. This command requires that you specify a
date or tag (with `-D' or `-r'), so that you
can count on reproducing the source you ship to others.
One often would like to use `-kv' with cvs
export. This causes any RCS keywords to be
expanded such that an import done at some other site
will not lose the keyword revision information. But be
aware that doesn't handle an export containing binary
files correctly. Also be aware that after having used
`-kv', one can no longer use the ident
command (which is part of the RCS suite--see
ident(1)) which looks for RCS keyword strings. If
you want to be able to use ident you must not
use `-kv'.
These standard options are supported by export
(see section Common command options, for a complete description of
them):
-D date
-f
-l
-n
-R
-r tag
In addition, these options (that are common to
checkout and export) are also supported:
-d dir
-k subst
-N
CVS can keep a history file that tracks each use of the
checkout, commit, rtag,
update, and release commands. You can
use history to display this information in
various formats.
Logging must be enabled by creating the file `$CVSROOT/CVSROOT/history'.
Warning: history uses `-f', `-l',
`-n', and `-p' in ways that conflict with the
normal use inside CVS (see section Common command options).
Several options (shown above as `-report') control what kind of report is generated:
-c
-e
-m module
-o
-T
-x type
Certain commands have a single record type:
F
O
T
One of four record types may result from an update:
C
G
U
W
One of three record types results from commit:
A
M
R
The options shown as `-flags' constrain or expand the report without requiring option arguments:
-a
history).
-l
-w
history is
executing.
The options shown as `-options args' constrain the report based on an argument:
-b str
-D date
-p repository
-r rev
-t tag
-u name
Use import to incorporate an entire source
distribution from an outside source (e.g., a source
vendor) into your source repository directory. You can
use this command both for initial creation of a
repository, and for wholesale updates to the module
from the outside source. See section Tracking third-party sources, for
a discussion on this subject.
The repository argument gives a directory name (or a path to a directory) under the CVS root directory for repositories; if the directory did not exist, import creates it.
When you use import for updates to source that has been modified in your source repository (since a prior import), it will notify you of any files that conflict in the two branches of development; use `checkout -j' to reconcile the differences, as import instructs you to do.
If CVS decides a file should be ignored (see section Ignoring files via cvsignore), it does not import it and prints `I ' followed by the filename
If the file `$CVSROOT/CVSROOT/cvswrappers' exists, any file whose names match the specifications in that file will be treated as packages and the appropriate filtering will be performed on the file/directory before being imported, See section The cvswrappers file.
The outside source is saved in a first-level RCS branch, by default 1.1.1. Updates are leaves of this branch; for example, files from the first imported collection of source will be revision 1.1.1.1, then files from the first imported update will be revision 1.1.1.2, and so on.
At least three arguments are required.
repository is needed to identify the collection
of source. vendortag is a tag for the entire
branch (e.g., for 1.1.1). You must also specify at
least one releasetag to identify the files at
the leaves created each time you execute import.
This standard option is supported by import
(see section Common command options, for a complete description):
-m message
There are three additional special options.
-b branch
-k subst
-I name
name can be a file name pattern of the same type that you can specify in the `.cvsignore' file. See section Ignoring files via cvsignore.
-W spec
spec can be a file name pattern of the same type that you can specify in the `.cvswrappers' file. See section The cvswrappers file.
See section Tracking third-party sources, and See section Creating a directory tree from a number of files.
Display log information for files. log calls
the RCS utility rlog, which prints all available
information about the RCS history file. This includes
the location of the RCS file, the head revision
(the latest revision on the trunk), all symbolic names (tags)
and some other things. For each revision, the revision
number, the author, the number of lines added/deleted and
the log message are printed. All times are displayed in
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). (Other parts of CVS
print times in the local timezone).
Only one option is interpreted by CVS and not passed on to rlog:
-l
By default, rlog prints all information that is
available. All other options (including those that
normally behave differently) are passed through to
rlog and restrict the output. See rlog(1) for a
complete description of options. This incomplete list
(which is a slightly edited extract from rlog(1)) lists
all options that are useful in conjunction with CVS.
Please note: There can be no space between the option
and its argument, since rlog parses its options
in a different way than CVS.
-b
-ddates
d1<d2
d2>d1
<d
d>
d<
>d
d
The date/time strings d, d1, and d2 are in the free format explained in co(1). Quoting is normally necessary, especially for < and >. Note that the separator is a semicolon (;).
rev1:rev2
:rev
rev:
branch
branch1:branch2
branch.
A bare `-r' with no revisions means the latest revision on the default branch, normally the trunk.
rlog prints the intersection of the revisions
selected with the options `-d', `-l',
`-s', and `-w', intersected with the union of
the revisions selected by `-b' and `-r'.
Contributed examples are gratefully accepted.
Builds a Larry Wall format patch(1) file between two releases, that can be fed directly into the patch program to bring an old release up-to-date with the new release. (This is one of the few CVS commands that operates directly from the repository, and doesn't require a prior checkout.) The diff output is sent to the standard output device.
You can specify (using the standard `-r' and `-D' options) any combination of one or two revisions or dates. If only one revision or date is specified, the patch file reflects differences between that revision or date and the current head revisions in the RCS file.
Note that if the software release affected is contained in more than one directory, then it may be necessary to specify the `-p' option to the patch command when patching the old sources, so that patch is able to find the files that are located in other directories.
These standard options are supported by rdiff
(see section Common command options, for a complete description of
them):
-D date
-f
-l
-r tag
In addition to the above, these options are available:
-c
-s
-t
-u
patch program can't handle the unidiff
format, so if you plan to post this patch to the net
you should probably not use `-u'.
-V vn
Suppose you receive mail from foo@bar.com asking for an update from release 1.2 to 1.4 of the tc compiler. You have no such patches on hand, but with CVS that can easily be fixed with a command such as this:
$ cvs rdiff -c -r FOO1_2 -r FOO1_4 tc | \ $$ Mail -s 'The patches you asked for' foo@bar.com
Suppose you have made release 1.3, and forked a branch called `R_1_3fix' for bugfixes. `R_1_3_1' corresponds to release 1.3.1, which was made some time ago. Now, you want to see how much development has been done on the branch. This command can be used:
$ cvs patch -s -r R_1_3_1 -r R_1_3fix module-name cvs rdiff: Diffing module-name File ChangeLog,v changed from revision 1.52.2.5 to 1.52.2.6 File foo.c,v changed from revision 1.52.2.3 to 1.52.2.4 File bar.h,v changed from revision 1.29.2.1 to 1.2
This command is meant to safely cancel the effect of `cvs checkout'. Since CVS doesn't lock files, it isn't strictly necessary to use this command. You can always simply delete your working directory, if you like; but you risk losing changes you may have forgotten, and you leave no trace in the CVS history file (see section The history file) that you've abandoned your checkout.
Use `cvs release' to avoid these problems. This command checks that no uncommitted changes are present; that you are executing it from immediately above a CVS working directory; and that the repository recorded for your files is the same as the repository defined in the module database.
If all these conditions are true, `cvs release' leaves a record of its execution (attesting to your intentionally abandoning your checkout) in the CVS history log.
The release command supports one command option:
-d
Warning: The release command uses
`rm -r `module'' to delete your file. This
has the very serious side-effect that any directory
that you have created inside your checked-out sources,
and not added to the repository (using the add
command; see section add--Add a new file/directory to the repository) will be silently deleted--even
if it is non-empty!
Before release releases your sources it will
print a one-line message for any file that is not
up-to-date.
Warning: Any new directories that you have
created, but not added to the CVS directory hierarchy
with the add command (see section add--Add a new file/directory to the repository) will be
silently ignored (and deleted, if `-d' is
specified), even if they contain files.
U file
A file
R file
M file
? file
Note that no warning message like this is printed for spurious directories that CVS encounters. The directory, and all its contents, are silently ignored.
Release the module, and delete your local working copy of the files.
$ cd .. # You must stand immediately above the
# sources when you issue `cvs release'.
$ cvs release -d tc
You have [0] altered files in this repository.
Are you sure you want to release (and delete) module `tc': y
$
You can use this command to assign symbolic tags to
particular, explicitly specified source revisions in
the repository. rtag works directly on the
repository contents (and requires no prior checkout).
Use tag instead (see section tag--Add a symbolic tag to checked out versions of files), to base the
selection of revisions on the contents of your
working directory.
If you attempt to use a tag name that already exists, CVS will complain and not overwrite that tag. Use the `-F' option to force the new tag value.
These standard options are supported by rtag
(see section Common command options, for a complete description of
them):
-D date
-f
-F
-l
-n
-R
-r tag
In addition to the above common options, these options are available:
-a
rtag look in the
`Attic' (see section Removing files from a module) for removed files
that contain the specified tag. The tag is removed from
these files, which makes it convenient to re-use a
symbolic tag as development continues (and files get
removed from the up-coming distribution).
-b
-d
In general, tags (often the symbolic names of software distributions) should not be removed, but the `-d' option is available as a means to remove completely obsolete symbolic names if necessary (as might be the case for an Alpha release, or if you mistagged a module).
Display a brief report on the current status of files with respect to the source repository, including any sticky tags, dates, or `-k' options.
You can also use this command to determine the
potential impact of a `cvs update' on your working
source directory--but remember that things might
change in the repository before you run update.
These standard options are supported by status
(see section Common command options, for a complete description of
them):
-l
-R
There is one additional option:
-v
Use this command to assign symbolic tags to the nearest
repository versions to your working sources. The tags
are applied immediately to the repository, as with
rtag, but the versions are supplied implicitly by the
CVS records of your working files' history rather than
applied explicitly.
One use for tags is to record a snapshot of the current sources when the software freeze date of a project arrives. As bugs are fixed after the freeze date, only those changed sources that are to be part of the release need be re-tagged.
The symbolic tags are meant to permanently record which
revisions of which files were used in creating a
software distribution. The checkout and
update commands allow you to extract an exact
copy of a tagged release at any time in the future,
regardless of whether files have been changed, added,
or removed since the release was tagged.
This command can also be used to delete a symbolic tag, or to create a branch. See the options section below.
If you attempt to use a tag name that already exists, CVS will complain and not overwrite that tag. Use the `-F' option to force the new tag value.
These standard options are supported by tag
(see section Common command options, for a complete description of
them):
-F
-l
-R
Two special options are available:
-b
-c
-d
If you use `cvs tag -d symbolic_tag', the symbolic tag you specify is deleted instead of being added. Warning: Be very certain of your ground before you delete a tag; doing this permanently discards some historical information, which may later turn out to be valuable.
After you've run checkout to create your private copy
of source from the common repository, other developers
will continue changing the central source. From time
to time, when it is convenient in your development
process, you can use the update command from
within your working directory to reconcile your work
with any revisions applied to the source repository
since your last checkout or update.
These standard options are available with update
(see section Common command options, for a complete description of
them):
-D date
-f
-k kflag
status command can be viewed
to see the sticky options. See section status--Display status information on checked out files.
-l
-P
-p
-R
-r tag
These special options are also available with
update.
-A
-d
update acts only on directories and files that
were already enrolled in your working directory.
This is useful for updating directories that were created in the repository since the initial checkout; but it has an unfortunate side effect. If you deliberately avoided certain directories in the repository when you created your working directory (either through use of a module name or by listing explicitly the files and directories you wanted on the command line), then updating with `-d' will create those directories, which may not be what you want.
-I name
-Wspec
spec can be a file name pattern of the same type that you can specify in the `.cvswrappers' file. See section The cvswrappers file.
-jrevision
With one `-j' option, merge changes from the ancestor revision to the revision specified with the `-j' option, into the working directory. The ancestor revision is the common ancestor of the revision which the working directory is based on, and the revision specified in the `-j' option.
In addition, each -j option can contain an optional date specification which, when used with branches, can limit the chosen revision to one within a specific date. An optional date is specified by adding a colon (:) to the tag: `-jSymbolic_Tag:Date_Specifier'.
See section Merging.
update keeps you informed of its progress by
printing a line for each file, preceded by one
character indicating the status of the file:
U file
A file
commit on the file. This is a
reminder to you that the file needs to be committed.
R file
commit on the file. This is a
reminder to you that the file needs to be committed.
M file
`M' can indicate one of two states for a file you're working on: either there were no modifications to the same file in the repository, so that your file remains as you last saw it; or there were modifications in the repository as well as in your copy, but they were merged successfully, without conflict, in your working directory.
CVS will print some messages if it merges your work,
and a backup copy of your working file (as it looked
before you ran update) will be made. The exact
name of that file is printed while update runs.
C file
? file
Note that no warning message like this is printed for spurious directories that CVS encounters. The directory, and all its contents, are silently ignored.
The following line will display all files which are not up-to-date without actually change anything in your working directory. It can be used to check what has been going on with the project.
$ cvs -n -q update
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