CVS is a system which enables a group of people to co-operate. For a group of volunteers and professionals like us, it's a great tool to use. You only have to focus on your own work. CVS will take care of merging it with the shared source-tree (aka the repository). I'm going to try to explain the basic functions, those you'll need the most and which you can't live without. For more information check the related links below !

Anonymous CVS

Those interested in the inners of the website can download the www-repository anonymously by doing the following:

export CVSROOT=cvs@badlands.rug.ac.be:/cvs
export CVS_RSH=/usr/bin/ssh
cvs checkout www/

Beware: this way you cannot commit changes to the repository, this is only useful to peek into the repository.

Using CVS locally to learn it

... Wim Vandeputte ...

Acquiring and setting up a CVS-account

... Wim Vandeputte ...

export CVSROOT=<name>@badlands.rug.ac.be:/cvs
export CVS_RSH=/usr/bin/ssh

Getting a local copy of the repository

Imagine you like the idea of helping us, then you need to have your own copy of the repository, a copy of the files. If you already know how to deal with CVS and you now have a CVS-account, then you'll have to do the following to get the test-repository:

cvs checkout test/

This will connect to the CVSROOT and get the specified repository with the given name. Now you're free to make changes to your local copy of the repository. test/ is the test-repository, our main repository is called www/.

Commiting your changes back

So you changed some files, probably improved some too ;) How are you going to synchronize these changes with the remote copy, you wonder. Try:

cvs commit

while residing in the root of the local repository. You'll notice it scans all files and starts an editor (probably vim). It's important now to describe exactly what changes you made. As a useful guide, CVS will show which files you touched.

Normally you'll commit changes after you're done working on some part of the repository, or when you quit working. Don't forget to commit before you quit.

Adding files (text and binary)

Now changing files is great, but what if you want to add files or directories. There's a distinction between binary and textfiles. Textfiles will be parsed and only changes will apply to being commit, with binaries this is not true. So if you are adding files, CVS needs to know whether it's a binary or not.

If you're adding textfiles, try:

cvs add <textfile>

For binary files, only add -ko, like:

cvs add -ko <binary>

These commands won't add it immediately, you'll have to commit your changes like we mentioned earlier.

Removing files

Removing files can easily done by doing:

cvs remove <file>

Once again you'll have to commit the removal.

Updating the repository

Now, imagine you already got the repository, but that was a while ago (some hours, days). The local repository is out of sync with the remote one. So you'll need to update it. Type:

cvs up

in the root of the local repository.

Related links