Essential CVS

CVSROOT Files

The CVSROOT directory in the CVS repository contains several administrative files. Most of these files are editable by the user and are stored in both RCS format (with a ,v suffix) and plain text to be used by CVS. These files can be checked out and committed like any other CVS file.

The history and val-tags files should not be edited. The passwd file should never be checked out; it should be edited in place.

The checkoutlist File

The checkoutlist file is used to designate files to be stored in the CVSROOT directory in both RCS and clear-text formats. Most of the CVS administrative files are stored this way automatically, and the checkoutlist file allows you to store user-created files in the same way. The most common files to be stored like this are scripts executed by the scripting files (commitinfo, loginfo, rcsinfo, taginfo, and verifymsg).

The file format is to simply list the names of the files, one file per line. All files must be in the CVSROOT directory.

The commitinfo File

The commitinfo file defines programs to run before a file is committed. If any of the programs exit with a nonzero exit status, the commit does not proceed. These programs run on the repository computer.

The file syntax is as follows:

                  name_pattern 
                  action

The name_pattern is a regular expression that must match a relative path within the repository. The action is a command-line template or the address of a script, plus any parameters required for that script or template. The full path ...