Cvs

Overview

Concurrent Versions System or cvs as it's typically called is used for keepping track of changes to text files, like scripts and source code.

cydonia has a cvs repository in /var/cvs

viewvc.cgi is a great cgi front end.

cvs uses the enviroment variable CVSROOT by default to detemrine where the file repository is kept. local to cydonia you wuld do this:

export CVSROOT=/var/cvs

if you would like to work with cvs over the netowrk check out the ssh section below.

cvs configuration

You can put your own cvs config in ~/.cvsrc. I find this config handy:

# always use the -N (show added or removed files) and -u (unified diff format) options to diff(1).
diff -Nu
# always use the -P (prune empty directories) and -d (check out new directories) options when updating.
update -Pd
# always use the -P (prune empty directories) option when checking out.
checkout -P

Shamelessly Borrowed from:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/cvs.operations.html

cvs template

CVS commit templates can be created to capture additional useful information.

Reason:
Reference:
Reviewed by:
CVS: ----------------------------------------------------------------------
CVS: Reason: 
CVS:    A discription of the change
CVS: Reference: 
CVS:    ticketnumber, bugzilla id etc
CVS: Reviwed by:
CVS:    peer reviewer

This was done by checking out CVSROOT and modifying rcsinfo, rcstemplate, and checkoutlist.

• rcsinfo was modified by adding the following line. Commenting out this line will also disable the template.

       ALL $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/rcstemplate

• rcstemplate is a text file which contains the template, which is now part of the CVSROOT repository.
• checkoutlist

Keywords

You can drop keywords in to cvs control files and they will be dynamically update.

so for example

# $Id$

will be expanded when checking out

# $Id: mkbb.pl,v 1.15 2002/10/30 16:38:02 user Exp $

This is: the file, the version , the date , the author, the state.

More: http://ximbiot.com/cvs/manual/cvs-1.11.6/cvs_12.html

cvs over ssh

export CVS_RSH="/usr/local/bin/ssh"
export CVSROOT=":ext:username@cvsserver:/var/cvs"

See Also

Branching and Merging in CVS

Git