CVS Hints and Tips
- Introduction
- Setup
- Operation
- Tagging
- Branching
- Merging
- Compression

CVS Hints and Tips

Introduction

Subversion is nothing less than an improvement on CVS. The conversion is not at all painful. There's even a section in the documentation for CVS users. Downloads etc from http://subversion.tigris.org/. There's also a package to convert CVS repositories, tags, branches and all to Subversion.

See SubversionTips.

Setup

SSH and RSH

Set the following environment variables:

Linux * export CVSRSH=ssh or export CVSRSH=rsh * export CVSROOT=:ext:user@host.com:/var/lib/cvsroot

Windows

set CVSRSH=ssh or set CVSRSH=rsh
set CVSROOT=:ext:user@host.com:/var/lib/cvsroot

PServer

export CVSROOT=:pserver:user@host.com:/var/lib/cvsroot

Local

export CVSROOT=:local:/var/lib/cvsroot

Operation

Tagging

Each release should be tagged with an appropriate tag. E.g. release11 or perhaps the date of the release or both.

In the root of your working directory, tag a release with:

cvs tag release20021222version11

Branching

Branching is usually done based on an existing tag. Invariably you are returning to a previous release for which you're going to make some fixes and re-release. See Tagging

Firstly make a working copy based on the tag. Either checkout a new working copy or convert your existing one.

Checkout a new working copy from the parent directory or your working directories with:

cvs checkout -d myprojectrelease11 -r release20021222version1_1

Convert an existing copy from the root working directory with:

cvs update -d -r release20021222version11

Now create the actual branch by tagging this release with a branch tag using the -b option:

cvs tag -b branchversion112

Now we create a new working copy for the branch with:

cvs checkout -d myprojectbranch -r branchversion11_2 myproject

or convert the existing working copy with:

cvs update -r branchversion112

Merging

This section describes merging changes back onto the main trunk.

Firstly create a working copy based on the main trunk.

cvs checkout myproject or convert an existing working copy with:
cvs update -d -A

Do a diff between the main trunk and the branch we're considering merging changes in from:

cvs diff -r branchversion112

To merge in the changes, do an update with the join (-j) flag with:

cvs update -d -j branchversion112

This merges all changes. Alternatively append the filenames to the command to only merge specified files.

Then update the working copy with:

cvs update

Deal with any merge conflicts in the normal way, then commit the chages with:

cvs commit -m "Merged in changes from branchversion112"

Compression

Performance can be improved by telling CVS to use compression for network traffic.

cvs -z3 co mymodule