Essential CVS

Chapter 6. Repository Management

This chapter is about the repository and the projects stored in it. If you want a quick guide to creating an initial repository, see the instructions in Chapter 2.

Topics covered in this chapter include repository creation, configuration, security, backup, and recovery. This chapter also covers the structure of the repository and the sandbox, the file locking CVS uses internally, how to edit the repository manually, and the CVS administrative files and environment variables.

CVS uses the term CVSROOT in two different ways. As the environment variable, it refers to the root directory of the repository. However, inside the repository is a directory called CVSROOT. To avoid confusion, this chapter never refers to the root directory of the repository as CVSROOT, and, except when mentioning the environment variable, this chapter uses the term solely to refer to the CVSROOT subdirectory of the repository root directory.

Tip

If your repository is in /var/lib/cvs, then /var/lib/cvs is the repository root directory and /var/lib/cvs/CVSROOT is the repository’s CVSROOT directory.

Creating a Repository

The repository root directory and the administrative files should be owned by a user made specifically for CVS; typically, the user is named cvs. This reduces the damage a malicious or careless user can do to the repository, as long as they don’t have root access.

To create a repository, create the repository root directory on the computer that will act as the CVS ...