Essential CVS, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11. Miscellaneous Topics Reference

This chapter is a comprehensive reference of CVS topics other than commands. It is intended to be useful as a quick reference, not a tutorial.

If you have never used CVS before, I suggest you read Chapters 2 and 3 before reading this reference. Those chapters explain the basic concepts of CVS and how to use it effectively.

This chapter contains the following sections:

"Administrative Files"

Describes CVS administrative files in the sandbox on the client computer or in the user’s home directory on the server.

"CVSROOT Files"

Describes CVS administrative files in the repository’s CVSROOT directory.

"CVSROOT Variables"

Describes variables that you can use in the administrative files in the CVSROOT directory.

"Dates"

Describes date and time formats that you can use with CVS.

"Environment Variables"

Describes environment variables on the server or the client that affect CVS.

"Keywords and Keyword Modes"

Describes the keywords that CVS uses, the expansion modes that affect how CVS processes the keywords, and how CVS processes line endings.

"Pattern Matching"

Describes regular expression and wildcard pattern matching in CVS.

"Repository Access Methods"

Describes methods used to access local and remote CVS repositories.

Administrative Files

CVS needs to keep track of what it’s doing, so it maintains a number of administrative files. Most of the files are in the CVS subdirectory of each sandbox directory, but there may also be hidden files in the directory itself, ...