suggestions for CVS use

Jason Stephenson jason at sigio.com
Wed May 7 12:14:55 EDT 2003


[Originally, I was just going to send this to Erik, but I realized that 
others might want to see it.]

As a follow-up, I was looking through a book that I have on using CVS, 
and there's a suggestion in the back:

[Q:] I need to move files around without losing revision history.

[A:] In the repository, copy (don't move) the RCS file to the desired 
new location in the project. They must remain in their old locations as 
well.

Then in a working copy do:

floss$ rm oldfile1 oldfile2 ...
floss$ cvs remove oldfile1 oldfile2 ...
floss$ cvs commit -m "removed from here" oldfile1 oldfile2 ...

When people do updates after that, CVS correctly removes the old files 
and brings the new files into the working copies just as though they had 
been added to the repository in the usual way (except that they'll be at 
unusually high revision numbers for supposedly new files).

Fogel, Karl. Open Source Development with CVS. Scottsdale: Coriolis Open 
Group, 1999. 230.

I believe this book is out of print, but the CVS reference chapters were 
available on the web under the GPL. The other chapters that discuss 
methodology and are thin on CVS-specific reference were not. [Actually, 
it turns out that the publisher went out of business. Which is a shame, 
'cause they published some really good books.]

Here's the author's web site: http://www.red-bean.com/~kfogel/index.html

Here's the site for the book where you can download the free chapters: 
http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/




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