CVS(1) | General Commands Manual | CVS(1) |
There is unfortunately some confusion between cvs_options and command_options. When given as a cvs_option, some options only affect some of the commands. When given as a command_option it may have a different meaning, and be accepted by more commands. In other words, do not take the above categorization too seriously. Look at the documentation instead.
If cvs is successful, it returns a successful status; if there is an error, it prints an error message and returns a failure status. The one exception to this is the cvs diff command. It will return a successful status if it found no differences, or a failure status if there were differences or if there was an error. Because this behavior provides no good way to detect errors, in the future it is possible that cvs diff will be changed to behave like the other cvs commands.
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:
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 node `Global options' in the CVS manual). For example the following line in .cvsrc
causes cvs to use compression level 6.
The cvs client and server store temporary files in a temporary directory. The path to this temporary directory is set via, in order of precedence:
Temporary directories should always be specified as an absolute pathname. When running a CVS client, -T affects only the local process; specifying -T for the client has no effect on the server and vice versa.
Same effect as if the CVSREADONLYFS environment variable is set. Using -R can also considerably speed up checkouts over NFS.
Note that cvs will not necessarily produce exactly the same output as without -n. In some cases the output will be the same, but in other cases cvs will skip some of the processing that would have been required to produce the exact same output.
Note: the history command is an exception; it supports many options that conflict even with these standard options.
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 node `Sticky tags' in the CVS manual).
-D is available with the annotate, checkout, diff, export, history, ls, rdiff, rls, rtag, tag, and update commands. (The history command uses this option in a slightly different way; see node `history options' in the CVS manual).
For a complete description of the date formats accepted by cvs, see node `Date input formats' in the CVS manual.
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:
Note that even with -f, a tag that you specify must exist (that is, in some file, not necessary in every file). This is so that cvs will continue to give an error if you mistype a tag name.
-f is available with these commands: annotate, checkout, export, rdiff, rtag, and update.
WARNING: The commit and remove commands also have a -f option, but it has a different behavior for those commands. See see node `commit options' in the CVS manual, and see node `Removing files' in the CVS manual.
The -k option is available with the add, checkout, diff, export, import, rdiff, and update commands.
WARNING: Prior to CVS version 1.12.2, the -k flag overrode the -kb indication for a binary file. This could sometimes corrupt binary files. see node `Merging and keywords' in the CVS manual, for more.
Available with the following commands: annotate, checkout, commit, diff, edit, editors, export, log, rdiff, remove, rtag, status, tag, unedit, update, watch, and watchers.
Available with the following commands: add, commit and import.
Note: this is not the same as the cvs -n program option, which you can specify to the left of a cvs command!
Available with the checkout, commit, export, and rtag commands.
Available with the following commands: annotate, checkout, commit, diff, edit, editors, export, ls, rdiff, remove, rls, rtag, status, tag, unedit, update, watch, and watchers.
The tag specification is sticky when you use this 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 node `Sticky tags' in the CVS manual).
The tag can be either a symbolic or numeric tag, as described in see node `Tags' in the CVS manual, or the name of a branch, as described in see node `Branching and merging' in the CVS manual. When tag is the name of a branch, some commands accept the optional date argument to specify the revision as of the given date on the branch. When a command expects a specific revision, the name of a branch is interpreted as the most recent revision on that branch.
Specifying the -q global option along with the -r command option is often useful, to suppress the warning messages when the rcs file does not contain the specified tag.
Note: this is not the same as the overall cvs -r option, which you can specify to the left of a cvs command!
-r tag is available with the commit and history commands.
-r tag[:date] is available with the annotate, checkout, diff, export, rdiff, rtag, and update commands.
The add command is used to present new files and directories for addition into the cvs repository. When add is used on a directory, a new directory is created in the repository immediately. When used on a file, only the working directory is updated. Changes to the repository are not made until the commit command is used on the newly added file.
The add command also resurrects files that have been previously removed. This can be done before or after the commit command is used to finalize the removal of files. Resurrected files are restored into the working directory at the time the add command is executed.
This is the cvs interface to assorted administrative facilities. Some of them have questionable usefulness for cvs but exist for historical purposes. Some of the questionable options are likely to disappear in the future. This command does work recursively, so extreme care should be used.
On unix, if there is a group named cvsadmin, only members of that group can run cvs admin commands, except for those specified using the UserAdminOptions configuration option in the CVSROOT/config file. Options specified using UserAdminOptions can be run by any user. See see node `config' in the CVS manual for more on UserAdminOptions.
The cvsadmin group should exist on the server, or any system running the non-client/server cvs. To disallow cvs admin for all users, create a group with no users in it. On NT, the cvsadmin feature does not exist and all users can run cvs admin.
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 be set to strict (which is the default).
Note that this command can be quite dangerous unless you know exactly what you are doing (for example see the warnings below about how the rev1:rev2 syntax is confusing).
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! If you delete different revisions than you planned, either due to carelessness or (heaven forbid) a cvs bug, there is no opportunity to correct the error before the revisions are deleted. It probably would be a good idea to experiment on a copy of the repository first.
Specify range in one of the following ways:
None of the revisions to be deleted may have branches or locks.
If any of the revisions to be deleted have symbolic names, and one specifies one of the :: syntaxes, then cvs will give an error and not delete any revisions. If you really want to delete both the symbolic names and the revisions, first delete the symbolic names with cvs tag -d, then run cvs admin -o. If one specifies the non-:: syntaxes, then cvs will delete the revisions but leave the symbolic names pointing to nonexistent revisions. This behavior is preserved for compatibility with previous versions of cvs, but because it isn't very useful, in the future it may change to be like the :: case.
Due to the way cvs handles branches rev cannot be specified symbolically if it is a branch. see node `Magic branch numbers' in the CVS manual, 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 node `Merging two revisions' in the CVS manual).
If file is omitted, obtain the text from standard input, terminated by end-of-file or by a line containing . by itself. Prompt for the text if interaction is possible; see -I.
For each file in files, print the head revision of the trunk, together with information on the last modification for each line.
The file ssfile currently contains two lines. The ssfile line 1 line was checked in by mary on March 27. Then, on March 28, joe added a line ssfile line 2, without modifying the ssfile line 1 line. This report doesn't tell you anything about lines which have been deleted or replaced; you need to use cvs diff for that (see node `diff' in the CVS manual).
The options to cvs annotate are listed in see node `Invoking CVS' in the CVS manual, and can be used to select the files and revisions to annotate. The options are described in more detail there and in see node `Common options' in the CVS manual.
Create or update 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 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 node `modules' in the CVS manual.
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 node `Global options' in the CVS manual) is specified, the CVSREAD environment variable is specified (see node `Environment variables' in the CVS manual), or a watch is in effect for that file (see node `Watches' in the CVS manual).
Note that running checkout on a directory that was already built by a prior checkout is also permitted. This is similar to specifying the -d option to the update command in the sense that new directories that have been created in the repository will appear in your work area. However, checkout takes a module name whereas update takes a directory name. Also to use checkout this way it must be run from the top level directory (where you originally ran checkout from), so before you run checkout to update an existing directory, don't forget to change your directory to the top level directory.
For the output produced by the checkout command see see node `update output' in the CVS manual.
In addition to those, you can use these special command options with checkout:
There is an important exception, however. It is very convenient when checking out a single item to have the output appear in a directory that doesn't contain empty intermediate directories. In this case only, cvs tries to ``shorten'' pathnames to avoid those empty directories.
For example, given a module foo that contains the file bar.c, the command cvs co -d dir foo will create directory dir and place bar.c inside. Similarly, given a module bar which has subdirectory baz wherein there is a file quux.c, the command cvs co -d dir bar/baz will create directory dir and place quux.c inside.
Using the -N flag will defeat this behavior. Given the same module definitions above, cvs co -N -d dir foo will create directories dir/foo and place bar.c inside, while cvs co -N -d dir bar/baz will create directories dir/bar/baz and place quux.c inside.
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 node `Branching and merging' in the CVS manual.
Get a copy of the module tc as it looked one day ago:
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 node `update' in the CVS manual). 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 node `modules' in the CVS manual, and see node `loginfo' in the CVS manual) and placed in the rcs file inside the repository. This log message can be retrieved with the log command (see node `log & rlog' in the CVS manual). 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.
At commit, a unique commitid is placed in the rcs file inside the repository. All files committed at once get the same commitid. The commitid can be retrieved with the log and status command (see node `log & rlog' in the CVS manual, see node `File status' in the CVS manual).
commit also supports these options:
Force cvs to commit a new revision even if you haven't made any changes to the file. As of cvs version 1.12.10, it also causes the -c option to be ignored. If the current revision of file is 1.7, then the following two commands are equivalent:
The -f option disables recursion (i.e., it implies -l). To force cvs to commit a new revision for all files in all subdirectories, you must use -f -R.
This works automatically since the -r option is sticky.
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:
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
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 for diff is different than for other cvs commands; for details see node `Exit status' in the CVS manual.
One or both -r options can be replaced by a -D date option, described above.
The following options specify the format of the output. They have the same meaning as in GNU diff. Most options have two equivalent names, one of which is a single letter preceded by -, and the other of which is a long name preceded by --.
For example, the following command compares the TeX file myfile with the original version from the repository, and outputs a merged file in which old regions are surrounded by \begin{em}-\end{em} lines, and new regions are surrounded by \begin{bf}-\end{bf} lines.
The following command is equivalent to the above example, but it is a little more verbose, because it spells out the default line group formats.
Here is a more advanced example, which outputs a diff listing with headers containing line numbers in a ``plain English'' style.
To specify a line group format, use one of the options listed below. You can specify up to four line group formats, one for each kind of line group. You should quote format, because it typically contains shell metacharacters.
In a line group format, ordinary characters represent themselves; conversion specifications start with % and have one of the following forms.
The printf conversion specification can be %d, %o, %x, or %X, specifying decimal, octal, lower case hexadecimal, or upper case hexadecimal output respectively. After the % the following options can appear in sequence: a - specifying left-justification; an integer specifying the minimum field width; and a period followed by an optional integer specifying the minimum number of digits. For example, %5dN prints the number of new lines in the group in a field of width 5 characters, using the printf format "%5d".
For example, %(N=0?no:%dN) line%(N=1?:s) is equivalent to no lines if N (the number of lines in the group in the new file) is 0, to 1 line if N is 1, and to %dN lines otherwise.
For example, the following command outputs text with a one-column change indicator to the left of the text. The first column of output is - for deleted lines, | for added lines, and a space for unchanged lines. The formats contain newline characters where newlines are desired on output.
To specify a line format, use one of the following options. You should quote format, since it often contains shell metacharacters.
In a line format, ordinary characters represent themselves; conversion specifications start with % and have one of the following forms.
The default line format is %l followed by a newline character.
If the input contains tab characters and it is important that they line up on output, you should ensure that %l or %L in a line format is just after a tab stop (e.g. by preceding %l or %L with a tab character), or you should use the -t or --expand-tabs option.
Taken together, the line and line group formats let you specify many different formats. For example, the following command uses a format similar to diff's normal format. You can tailor this command to get fine control over diff's output.
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:
A command like this can be used to produce a context diff between two releases:
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.
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 (and thus it always prunes empty directories).
One often would like to use -kv with cvs export. This causes any 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 keyword strings. If you want to be able to use ident you must not use -kv.
In addition, these options (that are common to checkout and export) are also supported:
cvs can keep a history log that tracks each use of most cvs commands. You can use history to display this information in various formats.
To enable logging, the LogHistory config option must be set to some value other than the empty string and the history file specified by the HistoryLogPath option must be writable by all users who may run the cvs executable (see node `config' in the CVS manual).
To enable the history command, logging must be enabled as above and the HistorySearchPath config option (see node `config' in the CVS manual) must be set to specify some number of the history logs created thereby and these files must be readable by each user who might run the history command.
Creating a repository via the cvs init command will enable logging of all possible events to a single history log file ($CVSROOT/CVSROOT/history) with read and write permissions for all users (see node `Creating a repository' in the CVS manual).
Note: history uses -f, -l, -n, and -p in ways that conflict with the normal use inside cvs (see node `Common options' in the CVS manual).
Certain commands have a single record type:
One of five record types may result from an update:
One of three record types results from commit:
One record type results from the admin command:
The options shown as -flags constrain or expand the report without requiring option arguments:
The options shown as -options args constrain the report based on an argument:
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 node `Tracking sources' in the CVS manual, 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 node `cvsignore' in the CVS manual), it does not import it and prints I followed by the filename (see node `import output' in the CVS manual, for a complete description of the output).
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 node `Wrappers' in the CVS manual.
The outside source is saved in a first-level 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 uniquely identify the files at the leaves created each time you execute import. The releasetag should be new, not previously existing in the repository file, and uniquely identify the imported release,
Note that import does not change the directory in which you invoke it. In particular, it does not set up that directory as a cvs working directory; if you want to work with the sources import them first and then check them out into a different directory (see node `Getting the source' in the CVS manual).
There are the following additional special options.
name can be a file name pattern of the same type that you can specify in the .cvsignore file. see node `cvsignore' in the CVS manual.
spec can be a file name pattern of the same type that you can specify in the .cvswrappers file. see node `Wrappers' in the CVS manual.
Specifically, this flag causes cvs to mark new files as if they were deleted on the main trunk, by taking the following steps for each file in addition to those normally taken on import: creating a new revision on the main trunk indicating that the new file is dead, resetting the new file's default branch, and placing the file in the Attic (see node `Attic' in the CVS manual) directory.
Use of this option can be forced on a repository-wide basis by setting the ImportNewFilesToVendorBranchOnly option in CVSROOT/config (see node `config' in the CVS manual).
The init command initializes a repository by adding the CVSROOT subdirectory and some default control files. You must use this command or initialize the repository in some other way before you can use it. Specify the root of the repository with the general -d option. This will set up an empty repository in the cvs root specified in the usual way (see node `Repository' in the CVS manual).
init is careful to never overwrite any existing files in the repository, so no harm is done if you run init on an already set-up repository. Note you may need to be a member of the group cvsadmin to do this.
Note init will enable history logging; if you don't want that, remove the history file after running init (see node `history file' in the CVS manual).
Display log information for files. log used to call the rcs utility rlog. Although this is no longer true in the current sources, this history determines the format of the output and the options, which are not quite in the style of the other cvs commands.
The output 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 date, the author, the number of lines added/deleted, the commitid and the log message are printed. All dates are displayed in local time at the client. This is typically specified in the $TZ environment variable, which can be set to govern how log displays dates.
Note: log uses -R in a way that conflicts with the normal use inside cvs (see node `Common options' in the CVS manual).
The > or < characters may be followed by = to indicate an inclusive range rather than an exclusive one.
Note that the separator is a semicolon (;).
A bare -r with no revisions means the latest revision on the default branch, normally the trunk. There can be no space between the -r option and its argument.
log prints the intersection of the revisions selected with the options -d, -s, and -w, intersected with the union of the revisions selected by -b and -r.
(If you are using a csh-style shell, like tcsh, you would need to prefix the examples above with env.)
The ls and rls commands are used to list files and directories in the repository.
By default ls lists the files and directories that belong in your working directory, what would be there after an update.
By default rls lists the files and directories on the tip of the trunk in the topmost directory of the repository.
Both commands accept an optional list of file and directory names, relative to the working directory for ls and the topmost directory of the repository for rls. Neither is recursive by default.
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. 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 patch created by rdiff spans multiple directories, then it may be necessary to specify the -p option when feeding the patch back to the patch command, so that patch is able to update files that are located in directories other than the one patch is run in.
In addition to the above, these options are available:
Suppose you have made release 1.3, and forked a branch called R_1_3fix for bug fixes. 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:
This command is meant to safely cancel the effect of cvs checkout. Since cvs doesn't lock files (except for the cvs admin -l command, see node `admin options' in the CVS manual), 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 node `history file' in the CVS manual) 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.
WARNING: The release command deletes all directories and files recursively. 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 node `Adding files' in the CVS manual) will be silently deleted—even if it is non-empty!
The remove command is used to remove unwanted files from active use. The user normally deletes the files from the working directory prior to invocation of the remove command. Only the working directory is updated. Changes to the repository are not made until the commit command is run.
The remove command does not delete files from from the repository. cvs keeps all historical data in the repository so that it is possible to reconstruct previous states of the projects under revision control.
To undo cvs remove or to resurrect files that were previously removed, see node `add' in the CVS manual.
In addition, these options are also supported:
Delete files before removing them.
Entire directory hierarchies are easily removed using -f, but take note that it is not as easy to resurrect directory hierarchies as it is to remove them.
server [-c path]
The cvs server and pserver commands are used to provide repository access to remote clients and expect a client conversation on stdin & stdout. Typically these commands are launched from inetd or via ssh (see node `Remote repositories' in the CVS manual).
server expects that the client has already been authenticated somehow, typically via ssh, and pserver attempts to authenticate the client itself.
Only one option is available with the server and pserver commands:
and
Use tag to assign symbolic tags to the revisions of files checked out into your sandbox. The tags are applied immediately to the repository, with the revision numbers to attach the tag to supplied implicitly by the cvs records of your working files.
rtag works similarly, but does not need a sandbox to operate in, requiring an explicitly supplied tag or date instead (or assuming the tip of the trunk when one is not supplied explicitly). cvs uses this preexisting tag or date to determine which revisions of files in the repository to attach the new symbolic tag to.
The symbolic tags are meant to permanently record which revisions of which files were used for some purpose. 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 on the trunk or other branches since the release was tagged. For more, see node `Branching and merging' in the CVS manual.
These commands may also be used to delete a symbolic tag, or to create a branch. See the options section below.
Note if you wish to run destructive commands such as tag deletion, you may need to be a member of the group cvsadmin to do this.
If you attempt to create a tag that already exists, CVS will complain and not overwrite that tag. Use the -F option to move the tag to a new set of revisions.
These standard options are supported by tag or rtag (see node `Common options' in the CVS manual, for a complete description of them):
Several tag specific options are also available. When an option is only available with one of tag or rtag, it is noted below:
WARNING: Recovering the information stored by branch tags is a very hard problem, more so than regular tags. Be absolutely sure you understand what you are doing before using this option.
WARNING: Be very certain of your ground before you delete a tag; doing this permanently discards some historical information, which could later turn out to be valuable.
WARNING: Be very certain of your ground before you delete a tag; doing this permanently discards some historical information, which could 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. Without the -C option, update will also merge any differences between the local copy of files and their base revisions into any destination revisions specified with -r, -D, or -A.
These special options are also available with update.
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.
spec can be a file name pattern of the same type that you can specify in the .cvswrappers file. see node `Wrappers' in the CVS manual.
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.
Note that using a single -j tagname option rather than -j branchname to merge changes from a branch will often not remove files which were removed on the branch. see node `Merging adds and removals' in the CVS manual, for more.
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 node `Branching and merging' in the CVS manual.
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.
For CVS updates, more information on documentation, software
related to CVS, development of CVS, and more, see:
ci(1), co(1), cvs(5), cvsbug(8), diff(1), grep(1), patch(1), rcs(1), rcsdiff(1), rcsmerge(1), rlog(1).