SCOUG Programming SIG CVS Instructions
Overview
CVS (Concurrent Versions System) is a tool for managing source code
development from multiple developers. It uses a client-server
architecture via the TCP/IP RSH protocol. CVS is a powerful program -
we'll be using only a very small amount if it's features.
We'll go over the process of downloading, installing, and using CVS.
Download and Install
Obviously you'll need to obtain a copy of CVS. Hobbes has two versions
cvs110.zip
and the slightly newer cvs1107.zip.
Both are also included on the March SCOUG CD.
Either one will work, but the following examples were done with the
newer cvs1107.zip. Unzip the file into it's own directory, say C:\CVS.
You'll also need to have EMX installed.
You will need to make several simple changes to your CONFIG.SYS:
- Add the CVS directory to your path.
- Set the CVSROOT environment variable. The format of the environment variable depends on what type of server you're connecting to. The example we'll use is used to connect to a remote server with RSH:
<![CDATA[
set CSVROOT=www.scoug.com:/csvdir
]]>
Once you reboot for the environment variable changes to take effect, you're set.
Usage
The fundamental concept in CVS is locking source code to make
modifications. CVS manages this for you through the commands
checkout and commit. But, before we can use those
commands we need to look introducing files into the repository.
The import command will take all of the files in the current
directory and add them to the repository. For example:
<![CDATA[
cvs import -m "Beginning of our project" ProgSig SCOUG Start
]]>
Let's look at the parameters:
- import
- is the command
- -m "Beginning of our project"
- Specifies the comment to be included with the initial version of the
files
- ProgSig
- The subdirectory in the repository to put these files into
- SCOUG
- The "Vendor" tag. Basically we'll ignore this
- Start
- The "release" tag. Again, we'll ignore it for now.
If we run the command we might see the following output.
<![CDATA[
[E:\project2]cvs import -m "Beginning of our project" ProgSig SCOUG Start
N ProgSig/rg.c
N ProgSig/rg.h
No conflicts created by this import
]]>
The N character at the beginning of each line is the response
that a new file was added. The second part of the line is the file that
was processed.
Now it's time to checkout files so that we can modify them.
Consider:
<![CDATA[
[E:\project2]cvs checkout .
cvs server: Updating .
cvs server: Updating CVSROOT
U CVSROOT/checkoutlist
U CVSROOT/commitinfo
U CVSROOT/config
U CVSROOT/cvswrappers
U CVSROOT/editinfo
U CVSROOT/loginfo
U CVSROOT/modules
U CVSROOT/notify
U CVSROOT/rcsinfo
U CVSROOT/taginfo
U CVSROOT/verifymsg
cvs server: Updating ProgSig
U ProgSig/rg.c
U ProgSig/rg.h
U ProgSig/rg2.c
U ProgSig/rg2.h
]]>
The checkout command accepts the file or directory to check out.
In this case we used . to indicate the current/root directory. CVS
checked out the CVSROOT files to help it manage the files we've checked
out. Then it checked out then entire repository relative to the current
directory. Recall that when we imported the files we imported them into
the ProgSig directory. Now that we're checking them out, a subdirectory
named ProgSig is created.
If we make a change to one of the files, we need to commit the change
so that other developers will have access to it. If we execute:
<![CDATA[
cvs commit ProgSig\rg.c
]]>
CVS will prepare to check the file in, and then load TEDIT to allow us
to prepare a comment. We could have used the -m parameter like we did
during import. Once we save our comment we see:
<![CDATA[
e:/cvsroot/ProgSig/rg.c,v <-- rg.c
new revision: 1.2; previous revision: 1.1
done
]]>
We have created a new version of the file (1.2) to replace 1.1. If we
wanted to check the status of the module we just checked in, we'd use
the log command:
<![CDATA[
cvs log ProgSig\rg.c
locks: strict
access list:
symbolic names:
Start: 1.1.1.1
SCOUG: 1.1.1
keyword substitution: kv
total revisions: 3; selected revisions: 3
description:
----------------------------
revision 1.2
date: 2000/03/17 06:41:19; author: RWHITE; state: Exp;
lines: +1 -0
Sample comment
----------------------------
revision 1.1
date: 2000/03/17 06:29:52; author: RWHITE; state: Exp;
branches: 1.1.1;
Initial revision
----------------------------
revision 1.1.1.1
date: 2000/03/17 06:29:52; author: RWHITE; state: Exp;
lines: +0 -0
Beginning of our project
=============================================================================
]]>
Reading from the bottom-up, we see the comment associate with our import
for revision 1.1.1.1 (the initial version). The version 1.1 was
automatically created at the same time. Finally, when we checked in
1.2, we included the text "Sample comment"
We've hit the basics. Here are several references for additional
reading, although none of them are as complete as they should be:
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