LateNightHacking Louis Projects

Auth

These are my notes on how to do obscure things in CVS.

Finding which file to recover:

• List defined modules: cvs -d cvsroot co -c (does not show "undefined" modules)
• List all known files (RCS file names): cvs -q rlog -R path, add -l for non-recursive
• List history of a file: cvs rlog fullPathToFile, add -N to not show tags
• When all else fails, do a grep on the server. :)

Once you know the file name and revision: To retrieve aDir/bDir/j.java, revision 1.3:

• If the folder containing the file is not available, you must create each folder in the path first: cvs up -d -l aDir, then cvs up -d -l aDir/bDir, etc.
• cvs up -r1.3 aDir/bDir/j.java

To create a new repository:

• cvs -d :local:repository_path init

To create a new module (top level directory)

• Go to the repository and create the directory
• Go to your workspace and cvs -d cvsroot checkout new_top_level_dir
• Proceede as usual, using cvs add etc.

To import existing code cleanly:

• The goal is to use cvs add instead of cvs import.
• Go to a temporary directory and set up a cvs workspace as if you were starting from scratch. This will probably involve cvs checkout (see previous case).
• Copy the CVS folder from the temporary directory to the one that has the existing code.
• Use cvs add to add all the existing files to the repository.

To incrementally merge changes/adds/deletes made on one branch to another branch:

• Create an 'end' tag on the source branch. You will need this for subsequent merges.
• Determine the 'begin' tag on the source branch. This is the 'end' tag of the previous merge. If there was no previous merge, it defaults to the branch tag (greatest common ancestor) and can be left off.
• Go to a workspace that has the target branch.
• cvs update -P -d -jbegin_tag -jend_tag
• cvs commit

To move all the changes made in one branch onto another branch (overwriting whatever was there):

• I thought I had used cvs export to it, but it doesn't seem to work (any more)
• Create an 'end' tag on the source branch. This way you can easily see if someone checks something in to the source branch after you merge.
• Create a clean workspace containing the source 'end' tag.
• Create a clean workspace containing the target branch.
• Use windiff. Copy, cvs add, cvs remove. Tip: cvs remove -f * can remove a whole filesystem branch. Tip: to add a whole filesystem branch, copy it from source to target, then perform surgery on the CVS folders: update/add/delete Tag and delete everything in Entries except the directory entries.
• cvs commit

• cvs add -kb foo.jar then cvs commit -r 1.3 foo.jar loses the -kb flag (while cvs commit foo.jar does not).
• Maybe: Interrupting a cvs commit that was adding a lot of brand new files seemed to leave many of the files with present timestamps instead of their original timestamps, and possibly deleted some files. We're not sure how this happened but the interrupted commit is the most likely culprit.