Essential CVS

Displaying File History

The cvs log command displays information about files, directories, or modules. You pass a parameter to specify which file, directory, or module you are interested in. If you don’t specify anything, cvs log displays log information about all files in the current sandbox directory. The user-provided part of this log information is entered when you run cvs commit or when you set the -m command option to cvs add.

cvs log is often used to help decide which two revisions to use to create a patch file, to determine a branch point, or to provide a quick guide to what the other developers are doing in a multiuser environment. Informative log messages are very important for all of these uses.

The options to cvs log reduce the amount of information it shows. By default, it displays everything it can. For each file, it displays a header; then, for each revision of the file it displays the revision number, date, author, state, log message, and number of lines added and deleted in that revision.

Example 5-18 shows a simple use of cvs log. Note that the keyword-substitution mode is the default mode, generating both keyword and value, and that the log message in revision 1.1 mentions both files that were added at the time.

Example 5-18. Using cvs log

bash-2.05a$ cvs log main.c
                      RCS file: /var/lib/cvs/wizzard/src/main.c,v Working file: main.c head: 1.9 branch: locks: strict access list: symbolic names: beta_0-1_branch: 1.9.0.2 beta_0-1_branch_root: 1.9 pre_beta_0-1: 1.8 ...