4. The Repository

Figure 3 below shows a typical setup of a repository. Only directories are shown below.

/usr
 |

 +--local

 |   |

 |   +--cvsroot

 |   |    | 

 |   |    +--CVSROOT

          |      (administrative files) 

          | 

          +--gnu

          |   | 

          |   +--diff

          |   |   (source code to gnu diff) 

          |   | 

          |   +--rcs

          |   |   (source code to rcs)

          |   | 

          |   +--cvs

          |       (source code to cvs) 

          | 

          +--yoyodyne

              | 

              +--tc

              |    |

              |    +--man

              |    |

              |    +--testing

              | 

              +--(other Yoyodyne software)

There are a couple of different ways to tell cvs where to find the repository. You can name the repository on the command line explicitly, with the -d (for "directory") option:

cvs -d /usr/local/cvsroot checkout yoyodyne/tc

Or you can set the $CVSROOT environment variable to an absolute path to the root of the repository, /usr/local/cvsroot in this example. To set $CVSROOT, all csh and tcsh users should have this line in their .cshrc or .tcshrc files:

setenv CVSROOT /usr/local/cvsroot

sh and bash users should instead have these lines in their .profile or .bashrc:

CVSROOT=/usr/local/cvsroot export CVSROOT

A repository specified with -d will override the $CVSROOT environment variable. Once you've checked a working copy out from the repository, it will remember where its repository is (the information is recorded in the CVS/Root file in the working copy).

The -d option and the CVS/Root file both override the $CVSROOT environment variable; however, CVS will complain if the -d argument and the CVS/Root file disagree.

There is nothing magical about the name /usr/local/cvsroot. You can choose to place the repository anywhere you like. See Remote repositories to learn how the repository can be on a different machine than your working copy of the sources.

The repository is split in two parts. $CVSROOT/CVSROOT contains administrative files for cvs. The other directories contain the actual user-defined modules.

4. The Repository

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