The EU Network CVS Repository
Detailed Instructions

Using CVS

Using CVS is really, really easy. Basically you just need to login once to the server from each machine you use (this then stores your password in a file .cvspass in your home directory), you then checkout the module, edit it, and when you're happy with the changes you commit them back to the server. When you commit them back you need to provide some information about the changes you made, this is then Emailed to everyone working on the pages to inform them that they should update their checked out version. If you already have a module checked out to your machine, you just need to update it occasionally, that is before you start working on them again, to merge in any changes made by others.

To summarise, you usually only need to use four cvs commands: login, checkout, update, commit. If you have any problems ask Gabrielle.

Logging In

Once you have a login name and password on our server, just issue

Remember, you only need to do this once on each machine (actually each filesystem) that you are using. Don't worry if you do this and then forget your password, we can easily change it for you.

Checking out a Module

Go to the directory on your local machine where you want the root directory of the module to sit, and type:

Committing Changes

Commits happen recursively from the directory in which you are sitting downwards. Usually you'll just want to sit in the top level directory of your module and issue:

You'll be prompted for a commit message (probably this will use the vi text editor, although you can change this if you want. vi isn't too difficult though, just type i and you can insert your message, and then type :wq when you are finished.

If you have added new files or directories you need to add them to the repository, to do this just issue

before you commit changes.

Updating

You will need to have an up-to-date checked out version before CVS will allow you to commit changes. Updating just merges other peoples changes with your own local version, and again updating happens recursively from the directory you are in. So to update everything, move to your root module directory and type:

More ...

CVS is a lot more powerful than this, you can easily get back to old versions, access log messages, etc. One useful command to know is

Which tells you which files you have editted and need to commit, which files CVS doesn't know about which need to be added, and which files need to be updated --- without actually running any of these commands.

More Information

The CVS home page is at

From this web page you can download CVS clients for different platforms (a client is what you need to be able to use the EU Network CVS server, if you want to set up your own repositories you will need to run a server as well). There are also links to documentation, like the users manual (although man cvs will tell you just about everything you need to know).