About CVS

About CVS

[Xue Fuqiao]

Hi list,

I'm reading the Cederqvist[1] now.  Because there are much code in VC
related to CVS, I think learing CVS can help me understand VC.  I have
many questions about CVS now and I want to ask for help.  I asked Stefan
(privately), and he suggested me asking my questions on emacs-devel
where many of you still remember when you used CVS for Emacs because
info-cvs does not seem to be active.

I know that "it is sort of flattering that people think emacs-devel can
fix every problem in the known universe", and I'll try my best solving
problems myself.  Here's the first question:

In 2.2.1 (http://ximbiot.com/cvs/manual/cvs-1.11.23/cvs_2.html#SEC12) of
the manual, it says "the name of the history file is the name of the
corresponding file with `,v' appended to the end".  But I found no `,v'
file in my checkout of Emacs web pages repository.  Can anyone point me
in the right direction?  Thank you very much.

FYI:
I checked out the repo using:
  cvs -z3 -d:ext:xfq@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/web/emacs co emacs
And I'm using CVS 1.12.13.

Footnotes:
[1] http://ximbiot.com/cvs/manual/cvs-1.11.23/cvs.html

--
Best regards, Xue Fuqiao.
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

Re: About CVS

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2013 17:14:44 +0800
> From: Xue Fuqiao <xfq.free@gmail.com>
> 
> In 2.2.1 (http://ximbiot.com/cvs/manual/cvs-1.11.23/cvs_2.html#SEC12) of
> the manual, it says "the name of the history file is the name of the
> corresponding file with `,v' appended to the end".  But I found no `,v'
> file in my checkout of Emacs web pages repository.

CVS is not a distributed VC system (a.k.a. "dVCS").  It keeps the
history in only one place: on the server.  When you checkout a
repository, you don't get the history, only the working tree.
Whenever you invoke any command that needs to consult the history,
like "cvs log" or "cvs diff", the CVS client communicates with the
server to get that info.

The history files are stored on the server, which is why you don't see
them on the client.

Re: About CVS

[Xue Fuqiao]

On Sat, Jun 8, 2013 at 6:18 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2013 17:14:44 +0800
>> From: Xue Fuqiao <xfq.free@gmail.com>
>>
>> In 2.2.1 (http://ximbiot.com/cvs/manual/cvs-1.11.23/cvs_2.html#SEC12) of
>> the manual, it says "the name of the history file is the name of the
>> corresponding file with `,v' appended to the end".  But I found no `,v'
>> file in my checkout of Emacs web pages repository.
>
> CVS is not a distributed VC system (a.k.a. "dVCS").  It keeps the
> history in only one place: on the server.  When you checkout a
> repository, you don't get the history, only the working tree.
> Whenever you invoke any command that needs to consult the history,
> like "cvs log" or "cvs diff", the CVS client communicates with the
> server to get that info.
>
> The history files are stored on the server, which is why you don't see
> them on the client.

I see, thank you.  I will try to forget my assumptions about how version
control works and try to think about it in the CVS way.

--
Best regards, Xue Fuqiao.
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/