# &cervisia; Manual

Bernd
Gehrmann

    bernd@mail.berlios.de

1999
2000
2001
2002
Bernd Gehrmann

This program may be distributed under the terms of the Q Public License as defined by Trolltech AS of Norway and appearing in the file LICENSE.QPL included in the packaging of this file.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

&FDLNotice;
2002-06-30
2.00.00

&cervisia; provides a graphical view of &CVS;.

KDE
kdesdk
Cervisia
CVS
version control
revision control

## Getting Started

### Accessing The Repository

In this section we assume that you are using &CVS; only on the client side. That means, someone (probably the administrator of the &CVS; repository) gave you an account on the server machine, and it's your job to checkout modules from the repository and work with them.

&CVS; supports several methods of accessing the repository, which can be categorized as follows:

Local

  The repository is something like `/home/cvs` and is simply stored in a folder which is accessible from your computer. It may physically be on a disk which is mounted via NFS, but this is an irrelevant detail. If you often use a certain local repository, you will want to tell &cervisia; about it.

  #### Adding A Local Repository

  1. Open the Repositories dialog by choosing Repository Repositories....

  2. Press the Add... button.

  3. Enter the details of the repository in the dialog box that displays.

  4. Confirm by pressing the OK button.

  In the future, whenever you use &cervisia; to check out a new module, &cervisia; will present you the repositories you have added here.

rsh

  The repository name is something like `:ext:bernd@cvs.cervisia.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/cervisia`.

  This method requires that you have a user account on the server machine (in this case, cvs.sourceforge.net and use a remote shell for communication. By default, &CVS; uses &rsh; for this purpose, however, &rsh; is long considered to be insecure, and is widely replaced by &ssh;.

  If you must use &ssh;, you must set the environment variable $`CVS_RSH` to &ssh; when using the `cvs` client. &cervisia; supports this easily.

  Open the repositories dialog again, and press the Add... button. Now enter the name of the repository in the first line and the remote shell (&eg; &ssh;) in the second line. If you now confirm with the OK button, &cervisia; memorizes these settings.

  Note that &cervisia; can not answer possible password requests from the server machine. You must make sure that a remote login works without requiring you to enter the password. With plain vanilla &rsh;, this can be achieved for example by creating a `$`HOME`/.rhosts` file with a list of trusted hosts (see the &rsh; manpage).

  With &ssh;, it can be achieved by copying your public key `$`HOME`/.ssh/identity.pub` to the server. In this case, the key must not be encrypted with a passphrase (see the &ssh;> manpage and the &CVS;/SSH FAQ on SourceForge). If you are unsure about these issues, ask your system administrator.

pserver

  The repository name looks like `:pserver:gehrmab@cvs.kde.org:/home/kde`

  This method accesses the server via a special protocol with a relatively weak authentication (`pserver` stands for password authentication). Before you can use such a server, you have to login. As this is not directly supported by &cervisia;, enter on the command line

      %cvs -d :pserver:joe@cvs.kde.org:/home/kde login

  (of course, with your repository substituted). &CVS; will prompt you for your password and check with the server. If the password is ok, the repository name, together with the (slightly scrambled) password, will be appended to the file `$`HOME`/.cvspass`. Whenever &CVS; accesses the repository, it will silently send the password to the server, so you do not have to take care of that once you have logged in. As everybody who knows your password can work with the repository in your name (and even do major damage to it), you should keep the `$`HOME`/.cvspass` secret and non-readable for others.

### Importing a module into the repository

In this section, we discuss how you put a new project into the &CVS; repository. If you just want to work with an existing project which is already in a repository, you may skip this section.

#### A screenshot of &cervisia;'s import dialog

A screenshot of &cervisia;'s import dialog

In you can see the dialog which helps you to import a project as a module. After you have filled out this form and confirmed by OK, the following &CVS; command is used:

    cvs -d repository import -m "" module vendortag releasetag

The name of the &CVS; repository, also known as $`CVSROOT`. You must have write access to it, and the repository must be properly initialized. If the repository does not yet exist, initialize it with the command ``cvs` `-d` repository `init``.

If the repository is remote, make sure that authentication works (see ).

The name of the module under which the project will be stored. After the import, the project can be checked out under this name. See for more information. This is also the name of the corresponding folder in the repository.

The vendor tag is historically used for tracking third-party sources. Just use your user name if you have no better idea. It does not matter much what you enter here.

This tag is also historically used for importing different versions of third-party software. If you are not doing this, use the word `start` or a string `FOO_1_0` where `FOO` is the name of your project and `1.0` is the version number of the imported release.

#### Working folder

This is the toplevel folder of the project you want to import. The import starts from this folder and goes down recursively.

#### Ignore files

If you fill out this field, an additional `-I filenames` option is given go the `cvs import` command. This entry is interpreted as a whitespace-separated list of file name patterns which are ignored. In general, a cleaner and less error-prone way to control which files go into the repository is to create a folder with only the files which you want to import and start from that. Nevertheless, this entry may be useful if the project contains files which are by default ignored by &CVS;, e.g. files with the name `core`. In such a case, simply enter the character `!` in this field. This overrules &CVS;'s scheme of ignored files, see .

#### Import as binaries

If you check this box, all files are imported in binary mode, i.e. an argument `-kb` is given to `cvs import`.

### Checkout a module from the repository

Before you work on a project under revision control, you must check out a working copy.

#### A screenshot of &cervisia;'s checkout dialog

A screenshot of &cervisia;'s checkout dialog

#### Repository

The name of the &CVS; repository, also known as ``$CVSROOT``. If the repository is remote, make sure that authentication works, see .

#### Module

The name of the module to be checked out. If you are working with an existing repository, you have probably got this name from the administrator. Alternatively, if the repository has a ``$CVSROOT`/modules` file, you can retrieve a list of available modules by clicking on the Fetch list button.

#### Working folder

The folder under which the module should be checked out. Note that the toplevel folder of the working copy is always created as a folder with the name as the module under the folder given here.

### The main screen

When you start &cervisia;, and open a working copy by choosing File Open Sandbox... you see a hierarchical view of the current folder. According to the settings in your `.cvsignore` files, the files you usually do not want to include into the repository - like e.g. object files - are not shown. For each file, you see its corresponding status. In the default setting, this is "Unknown" because &cervisia; delays the fetching of information until you choose Update or Status from the File menu. With this approach, you have a minimal amount of functionality available even if you do not have a permanent connection to the &CVS; server.

#### A screenshot of &cervisia;'s main view

A screenshot of &cervisia;'s main view

The commands in the File menu usually act only on the files which you have marked. You may also mark folders. Now choose Update from the File menu. &cervisia; issues a

    cvs update -n filenames

command to get status information for the marked files. Note that &cervisia; goes recursively into subfolders. only if you have the according option in the Settings menu set. According to the respective file's status, you now see an entry in the Status column:

- Locally Modified - This means you have modified the file compared to the version in the repository.

- Locally Added - This means the file does not exist in the repository, but in your working folder and you have scheduled it for addition. The actual insertion into the repository only happens after a commit.

- Locally Removed - This means you have scheduled the file for removal, but it still exists in the repository. The actual removal happens only after a commit.

- Needs Update - This is shown if a newer version of the file exists in the repository, e.g. because someone committed a modification. Normally, you want to update this file so you have an up-to-date version in your folder.

- Needs Patch - This is essentially the same as before. The difference is only the hint that in case of an update, the &CVS; server transfers only a patch instead of the whole file to you.

- Needs Merge - Indicates that a merge of the revision of this file in your working folder with the version in the repository is necessary. This typically happens if you have made modifications to the file file while someone else has committed his modifications. If you choose to update, the modifications in the repository are merged into your file. In case of a conflict (i.e. if someone else has changed some of the same lines like you) the new status is then "Conflict".

- Up to Date - Indicates that the file is identical with the version in the repository.

- Conflict - This is shown if this file still has conflict markers in it. Maybe you have previously updated the file and not resolved the conflicts.

- Not In CVS - Indicates that the file is not registered in the &CVS; repository. If you want it to available for others, you should add it to the repository. If not, you may consider adding it to your `.cvsignore` file.

Now that you have got an overview of the current status of the CVS, you may want to do an update. Mark some files (or the root of the folder tree which is equivalent to marking all files in this folder). Now choose Update from the File menu. (Of course, you could have chosen this at the beginning of the session). For some of the files the status may change now. Typically, files which had "Needs Patch" or "Needs Update" are updated. So the following new items are possible in the status column:

- Updated - Shown if the file was updated from the repository.

- Patched - Indicates that the &CVS; server has sent a patch for this file and the patch has been successfully applied. If the patch was not successful because there was a conflict between your modifications and those someone else committed to the repository, the status is now "Conflict".

You may have noticed that according to the status of the file, its row has a different color. The colors are chosen to somehow reflect the priority of the status. For example, a file with a conflict is marked red to show you that you have to resolve a conflict before you can continue working with the file. If your folder contains a high number of files, you may nevertheless lose the overview. To get more concise information about which files have an unusual status, simply click on the header of the Status column. The file list is then sorted by priority, so you have all important information at the top of the list. To get back to the alphabetically sorted view, click on the header of the File name column.

## Working with files

All commonly used &CVS; functionality is directly available in &cervisia;'s main view. Commands usually act on several files at once, namely all which currently selected. If the selection includes folders, its interpretation depends on the settings made under the Settings menu. For example, if Settings Commit and remove recursively is checked and you choose File Commit... while a folder is selected, then all files in the tree under that folder are committed. Otherwise, only the regular files in the folder itself are affected.

You can simply edit a file by double-clicking on it or pressing Return. This starts the editor configured under Settings Configure Cervisia... with the file name as argument.

### Adding files

Adding files to a project requires two steps: First, the files must be registered with &CVS;. To this end, mark all files to be added in &cervisia;'s main view. Then, choose File Add to repository. &cervisia; issues a command

    cvs add filenames

If the operation was successful, the status column should have "Added to repository" for the added files.

In order to actually put the files into the repository, you must commit them. This procedure has an important advantage: You can commit the files together with modifications to other parts of the project. When doing this, one can easily see (e.g. in commit emails) that all these changes are part of a whole.

&CVS; is not designed to provide meaningful revision control for binary files. For example, merging binary files normally does not make sense. Furthermore, by default &CVS; performs keyword expansion (&eg; on the string `&dollar;Revision: 1.6 &dollar;`) when a file is committed. In binary files, such replacements may corrupt the file and make it completely unusable. In order to switch this behavior off, you should commit binary files (or other files, like Postscript) with a command line

    cvs add -kb filenames

In &cervisia;, this is achieved by choosing File Add binary...

### Removing files

Like adding files, removing files is done in two steps: First, the files have to be registered as removed by choosing File Remove from repository which issues the command

    cvs remove -f filenames

After that, this modification to the sandbox has to be committed, possibly together with other modifications to the project.

The above command only works if the file is up-to-date. Otherwise, you get an error message. This behavior is sensible: If you have modified the file compared to the version in the repository, or if someone else has made any modifications, you will first want to check if you really want to discard them.

### Adding and removing folders

Folders are handled fundamentally different from ordinary files by &CVS;. They are not under revision control, i.e. you cannot tell which folders existed in the project at a certain time. Furthermore, folders can never be explicitly removed (expect by removing them directly in the repository).

As a substitute, &CVS; follows the convention that a folder is "not existent" in a version of the project if is is empty. This convention can be enforced by using the option `-P` to `cvs update` and `cvs checkout`. This option can be set in the menu Settings Prune Empty Folders On Update.

A folder can be added to the repository with the command

    cvs add dirname

which is implied by the menu item File Add to repository. Note that in contrast to adding files, adding folders does not require a commit afterwards.

### Committing files

When you have made a certain amount of changes to your working copy, and you want other developers to have access to them, you 'commit' them. With a commit, you place your versions of the modified files as new revisions into the repository. A subsequent update by another developer will bring your modifications into his working copy.

In order to commit a couple of files, select them in &cervisia;'s main view and choose File Commit....

#### A screenshot of &cervisia;'s commit dialog

You get a dialog that shows you on the top a list of the selected files and on the bottom a log message for your changes. When you have finished the dialog, the command

    cvs commit -m message filenames

is used. &cervisia; helps you in several ways to find a meaningful log message: First, in the file list you can double-click a file or press Return in order to see the changes you have made to the file. Second, it gives you a list of log messages you have previously used in a combo box. Third, this dialog is integrated with &cervisia;'s changelog editor described below.

A common error you may encounter when committing is Up-to-date check failed. This indicates that someone has committed changes to the repository since you last updated. Or more technically, that your `BASE` revision is not the newest on its branch. In such a case, &CVS; refuses to merge your modifications into the repository. The solution is to update, resolve any conflicts and commit again. Of course, if you are working on a software project, it is normally good style to check if the program still works after you have updated - after all, there could be bad interactions between your modifications and the other modifications which break the code.

Another popular mistake results in the error message Sticky tag 'X' for file 'X' is not a branch. This happens if you try to commit a file which you have previously brought to a certain revision or tag with the command

    %cvs update -r X

(which is &eg; used by the menu item Advanced Update to Tag/Date...). In such a case, the tag on the file gets sticky, i.e. further updates do not bring you to the newest revision on the branch. If you want to commit further revisions to the branch, you have to update to the branch tag before you do further commits.

With &cervisia;, it is quite easy to maintain a ChangeLog file that is compliant with the format laid out in the GNU coding guidelines. To use it, choose File Insert ChangeLog entry.... If a file with the name `ChangeLog` exists in the toplevel folder of your sandbox, this file will be loaded and you have the possibility to edit it. To this end, at the top of the file, an entry with the current date and your user name (which can be configured as described in ) is inserted. When you finish the dialog this dialog by clicking OK, the next commit dialog you open will have the log message set to the message you last entered in the change log.

### Resolving conflicts

Conflicts may occur whenever you have made changes to a file which was also modified by another developer. The conflict is detected by &CVS; when you update the modified file. &CVS; then tries to merge the modifications committed by the other developer into your working copy. The merge fails if both your and his modifications are in overlapping parts of the file, and the &CVS; server issues and error message.

It is your job now to resolve these conflicts before you commit the file. &CVS; will refuse to commit any files with conflicts until they have been edited. Of course, you have a great amount of freedom when resolving a set of conflicts: you can for each conflict decide to take one of the two alternative versions. You can also decide that both approaches are are broken and rewrite a whole routine or the complete file from scratch.

In &cervisia;'s main view, files with conflicts are indicated with "Conflict" in the status column and with a red color. From the main view, you can of course resolve conflicts the traditional way: just double-click the file in question and edit it with your favorite editor. But you can also choose to use the dialog available via File Resolve....

#### A screenshot of &cervisia;'s resolve dialog

A screenshot of &cervisia;'s resolve dialog

On the top of the dialog, you see your version the file on the left hand side and the version in the repository on the right hand side. The differences between them are marked in red color. Below these two versions, you can see the merged version which will be saved as soon as you click the Save button.

You can switch between the differing sections by pressing << and >>. In the lower middle of the dialog you can see which section is currently marked. For example, `2 of 8` means that you are currently at the second differing section of 8 total. Now can can decide section by section which of the both versions you want to have in the merged file. By pressing A, you take over the version you edited. By pressing B, you take over the version from the repository.

## Obtaining information about files

### Browsing cvs logs

When you mark a file in the main view and choose Browse log from the View menu, a

    cvs log filenames

command is issued and a dialog is shown which reflects the version history of the marked file.

#### A screenshot of &cervisia;'s browse logs dialog

A screenshot of &cervisia;'s browse logs dialog

You can choose to see the history as a tree or in list form. What you prefer is of course a matter of taste and it depends on what information you are interested in. The tree is an intuitive representation of what has been done on different branches by which authors. As tooltips, you can see the according log messages. The list is by its nature linear and therefore does not give an immediate view of branches. On the other hand, it concentrates more otherwise relevant information on less screen estate, namely the time of each change of the file and the first part of the log message.

To obtain more information about a certain revision, you can click on it either in the list or the tree view. The fields in the middle of the dialog are then filled with the complete information provided by `cvs log`. You can mark two revisions, called 'A' and 'B', which are relevant if you make use of further features provided by the push buttons. Revision 'A' can be chosen with the left mouse button, revision 'B' with the middle one. In the list view, you can also navigate with with your cursor keys. In order to mark revisions 'A' and 'B', use the keybindings Ctrl A, Ctrl B, resp.

If you press the button Annotate, you get a dialog showing the text of file belonging to the revision marked as 'A'. Every line is prefixed with the information about who edited this last time, and at which revision this happened.

If you press the button Diff, a `cvs diff` call is issued and you get a dialog in which all the modifications between the two marked revisions are shown. To make it easy to see the changes, different colors are used to mark lines which have been added, removed or simply changed.

### Browsing the history

If the used repository has logging enabled, &cervisia; can present you a history of certain events like checkouts, commits, rtags, updates and releases. Choose History from the View menu, and &cervisia; will issue the command

    cvs history -e -a

This fetches the complete logging file from the server, i.e. a list of the events for all users and all modules. This can be a huge amount of data!

Now you can see the list of events, sorted by date. In the second column, the type of the event is shown:

- Checkout - The user who is displayed in the 'Author' column has checked out a module

- Tag - A user has used the command `cvs rtag`. Note that the usage of `cvs tag` (as done by &cervisia;'s Advanced Tag/Branch... command) is not recorded in the history database. This has historical reasons (see the &CVS; FAQ).

- Release - A user has released a module. Actually, this command is rarely used and not of much value.

- Update, Deleted - A user has made an update on a file which was deleted in the repository. As a consequence, the file was deleted in his working copy.

- Update, Copied - A user has made an update on a file. A new version was copied into working folder.

- Update, Merged - A user has made an update on a file. The modifications in the repository version on the file were merged into his working copy.

- Update, Conflict - A user has made an update on a file, and a conflict with his own modifications was detected.

- Commit, Modified - A user committed a modified file.

- Commit, Added - A user added a file and committed it.

- Commit, Removed - A user removed a file and committed it.

#### A screenshot of &cervisia;'s history dialog

A screenshot of &cervisia;'s history dialog

You can sort the list by other criteria simply by clicking on the respective column header. In order to sort out the history entries you are interested in, there are various filter options activated by check boxes:

- Show commit events - shows commits

- Show checkout events - shows checkouts

- Show tag events - shows taggings

- Show other events - shows events not included in the above

- Only user - shows only events caused by a certain user

- Only filenames matching - filters file names by a regular expression

- Only dirnames matching - filters folder names by a regular expression

Special characters recognized by the regular expression matcher are:

- `x*` matches any number of occurrences of the character `x`.

- `x+` matches one or more of occurrences of the character `x`.

- `x?` matches zero or one occurrences of the character `x`.

- `^` matches the start of the string.

- `$` matches the end of the string.

- `[a-cx-z]` matches a set of characters, &eg; here the set consisting of a,b,c,x,y,z.

### Watching differences between revisions

There are several places in &cervisia; where you can ask for a window showing the differences between revisions of a file:

- In the main view, you can choose View Difference to repository.... This is based on the command `cvs diff` and shows you the differences between the version in your sandbox and the version to which you last updated (also known as `BASE`). This is in particular useful just before you commit a file, so you can find an appropriate log message.

- In the dialog that is shown when a you commit a set of files, you can request a difference window by selecting a file name in the selection list, either by double-clicking it or by pressing Return. This is quite similar to using View Difference to repository... with the respective file in the main view.

- In the Browse logs dialog, you can mark two revisions of a file and request a dialog showing the differences between them (see the section ).

As you may have expected, &cervisia; does not just dump the output of the `diff` command into your terminal, but shows you a graphical view as seen in .

#### A screenshot of &cervisia;'s diff dialog

A screenshot of &cervisia;'s diff dialog

The text in the dialog is an improved variant of the text given by the diff command with the `-u` option. You can see the differing versions in two windows, with lines arranged such that you can do a side-by-side comparison. That means, where text has been added or deleted, the respective window shows empty lines with the marker `+++++` at the left hand side. Elsewhere, you can see the running number of each line in the left column.

In the second column in the right window, you can see which kind of change has been made. Possible types are `Add`, `Delete` and `Change`. The respective lines are marked in blue, green and red color. In the middle of the dialog a compressed image of the color markers is shown. In this way, you can get a quick overview of the overall changes to the file. You can also use the position of the colored regions in the compressed image as an orientation when you using the scroll bars.

Normally, the scrollbars at the left and the right window are synchronized, i.e. if you scroll on the left hand side, the right hand side is scrolled by the same amount. You can change this by checking the box Synchronize scroll bars.

For information about how to customize the diff dialog, see .

### Watching an annotated view of a file

With the command `cvs annotate`, &CVS; offers the possibility to see - for each line in a file - who has modified a line the most recently. This view may be helpful in order to find out who has introduced a change in the behavior of a program or who should be asked about some change or bug in the code.

&cervisia; gives you to access to this feature, but it further enriches the information in an interactive way. You obtain an annotate view by choosing View Annotate.... Another possibility is to press the button Annotate in the Browse log dialog. In you can see a screenshot of the dialog.

#### A screenshot of &cervisia;'s annotate dialog

A screenshot of &cervisia;'s update to tag dialog

In the annotate dialog, you see in a window the latest version of the selected file. In the columns before the text, you get some information related to the latest change in each line. In the first column the revision number is displayed. In the second column you see the name of the author of that revision. Finally, in the third column you see the date of the latest change in the line.

Consequently, when a certain line appears strange to you or you assume a bug there, you can immediately see who is responsible for that line. But not only that, you can also find out why that line was changed. To this end, move the mouse cursor over the respective revision number. Then a tooltip appears that shows the log message and the date of the change.

## Advanced usage

### Tagging and branching

We discuss here only the technical aspects of tagging and branching. If you are only a user, not the administrator of the repository, you will probably not be confronted with the problem. If however you are your own administrator, you should first read about the non-technical problems that accompany branching, in order to get an impression of how time-consuming and error-prone maintaining different branches of a project can be. The appendix includes some references about this topic.

Simple tagging is something you usually do when a release is made, so that you can at any time easily get back to the project state at that time. Tags are usually given a name consisting of the project name and the version number. For example, &cervisia; 1.0 is available under the tag `CERVISIA_1_0`. &cervisia; enforces &CVS;'s strict rules about what constitutes valid tag name. It must begin with a letter and may contain letters, digits, hyphens and underscores.

Normally, you will want to tag the whole project (although &CVS; of course allows you to tag only a subset). To this end, mark the toplevel folder in the view and choose Advanced Tag/Branch. Now enter the name of the tag, press Return and you are done!

Creating a branch is not significantly more difficult: In the tag dialog, check the box Create branch with this tag. You can also delete an existing tag: Choose Advanced Delete tag in the main view.

There are several ways to update to a certain state of the project:

- You can update to a certain tag. Use Advanced Update to tag/date for this. The same procedure is used for updating to a branch. The command issued by &cervisia; is

      cvs update -r tag

- You can update to a certain date. This may be useful if an error was introduced in the project between two releases, you know approximately between, and have an opinion on when that was. You can go to some date by choosing Advanced Update to tag/date and checking the box Update to date. In the field below, you can enter a wide variety of date formats. One possible format is `yyyy-mm-dd` where `yyyy` is the year, `mm` is the month (numerically) and `dd` is the day. Alternatives are some english phrases like `yesterday` or `2 weeks ago`. When you use this option, &cervisia; uses the command

      cvs update -D date

- Both options above make a tag or date 'sticky', i.e. you can not commit further modifications on that files (unless the tag is a branch tag). In order to get back to the trunk, also known as the branch with the name `HEAD`, use the menu item Advanced Update to HEAD. This results in a command

      cvs update -A

#### A screenshot of &cervisia;'s update to tag dialog

A screenshot of &cervisia;'s update to tag dialog

Another aspect of branching is the merging of modifications from a branch to the current branch. If you are going to do this, choose Advanced Merge.... The dialog that appears now gives you two options:

Either you may merge all modifications done on a branch to the current branch. In that case, check the box Merge from branch and fill in the branch you want to merge from. &cervisia; will then execute the command

    cvs update -j branchtag

The other possibility is that you want to merge only the modifications made between two tags on a branch. This usually happens when you merge from the same branch to the trunk several times. In that case, check the box Merge modifications and enter (in the correct order) the two relevant tags. This will result in a command

    cvs update -j branchtag1 -j branchtag2

### Using watches

A watch is the conventional name for &CVS;'s feature to notify users of the repository whenever a file has been changed or a developer has started editing a file. The usage of watches requires that the file ``$CVSROOT`/CVSROOT/notify` has been set up properly. This is not discussed here; if you need further information on the setup from the administrator's point of view, read one of the books listed in the appendix.

&cervisia;'s main support of watches are six menu items.

In order to add a watch to one or several files, use Advanced Add watch.... In the dialog you get, you can choose to get notified for any of the types of events that &CVS; supports. For example, if you only want to get notified when a file is committed, check the boxes Only and Commits. If you want to get notified about any event related to the marked files, check the box All. The command line used when you accept the dialog is

    cvs watch add -a commit filenames

or with a similar option, depending on the events you chose to watch.

If you are not interested in some files anymore, you can remove your watches on them. To this end, use Advanced Remove watch.... In the dialog you get here, the same options are offered as in the form you filled out when adding the watch. When you confirm this dialog, &cervisia; issues the command

    cvs watch remove filenames

possibly with an option `-a` for the chosen events.

Finally, you can get a list of the people who are watching a couple of files. Choose Advanced Show watchers. Using this menu item will result in a command

    cvs watchers filenames

In the normal usage scenario of &CVS;, each developer works separately in his checked out sandbox. When he wants to modify some file, he can just open it in his editor and start working on it. Nobody else will know about this work until the file gets committed.

For some developer groups, this is not the preferred model of cooperation. They want to get notified about someone working on a file as soon as he starts with it. This can be achieved by some further &CVS; commands. Before you start editing a file, select it in &cervisia;'s main window and choose Advanced Edit. This will execute the command

    cvs edit filenames

This will send out a notification to everyone who has set an `edit` watch on this file. It will also register you as an editor of the file. You can obtain a list of all editors of a certain file by using Advanced Show editors. This is equivalent to typing on the command line

    cvs editors filenames

An editing session is automatically ended when you commit the affected file. At that moment, an `unedit` notification gets sent out to all people who have registered a respective watch on the file. Of course, sometimes you may not want to commit the file, but abort the editing session and revert to the previous version of the file. This is done by using Advanced Unedit. Note that &cervisia; will not ask you for confirmation! That means, if you use this menu item, all your work done since you used Advanced Edit will get lost. Precisely, &cervisia; uses the command line

    echo y | cvs unedit filenames

So far, we have only the discussed the case where edits and unedits are used voluntarily be the developers. In addition &CVS; supports a model which enforces the usage of these commands. The responsible command to switch to this model is `cvs watch on` which we will not explain further because it is mostly used by the administrator of the repository. However, the important point from the developer's point of view is that when the project enforces edits, working copies are checked out readonly. That means you cannot edit a file by default (unless you use tricks like `chmod`). Only when you use Advanced Edit, the file becomes writable. It is made readonly again when you commit the file or use Advanced Unedit.

&cervisia;'s editor interface helps you with projects that enforce watches also in a different way. If you just started an editor with a readonly file by double-clicking on it or by using File Edit, you would not be able to save your modifications later. This has of course a reason: Whenever you want to change a file, you should run `cvs edit` before, so that all people watching the file get a notification that you are working on it.

In such a case, it is advisable to check the option Settings Do cvs edit automatically when necessary. Now, whenever you edit a file by double-clicking it, &cervisia; will run `cvs edit` before the editor is actually executed. Then you can edit your file as usual. When you have finished your work, commit your files, and the committed files are readonly again.

### Locking

The development model usually followed when &CVS; is used is called unreserved checkouts. Each developer has his own sandbox where he can edit files as he likes. If when the watch features - like `cvs edit` - are used, multiple developers can work on files synchronously. Changes done by a different developer are merged into the local sandbox when an update is performed.

Other revision control systems - like RCS and SourceSafe use a different model. When a developer wants to a edit a file, he has to lock it. Only one developer at a time can a lock a file. When he has finished editing, the lock is released. On the one hand, with this model, conflicts can never happen. On the other hand, two developers can not work on the same file at the same time, even when their changes do not affect each other. This can be a bottleneck. We are not going to discuss the organizational benefits of both approaches. Nevertheless we mention that although &CVS; has some support for locking, it is not the preferred way of working with &CVS;. You should not use these features unless you are sure that your project manager allows them.

With &cervisia;, you lock files as follows. Select the desired files in the main view. Then choose Advanced Lock. This runs the command

    cvs admin -l filenames

The reverse effect is achieved by using Advanced Unlock. This runs the command

    cvs admin -u filenames

## Customizing &cervisia;

&cervisia; can be customized in various ways to your needs and preferences. Some options which you may want to change regularly are directly available in the Settings menu. Others are united in a common dialog which is available via Option Settings....

### General

#### User name for the ChangeLog editor

Whenever you use the menu item File Insert ChangeLog entry..., a new ChangeLog entry is generated with the current date and your username. Normally, it is considered good style to insert your full name and your email address into each of your ChangeLog entries. Here you can configure this.

#### Path to cvs

Here you can set the name (or path) to the `cvs` command line client. By default, the executable found in your `$PATH` is used by &cervisia;.

#### Editor

Here you can configure which editor is called when a file in the main view is double-clicked. To execute the editor, the entry made here is concatenated with the file name and given to a shell. So it is acceptable to use programs like `gnuclient` here. You can also enter the string `$EDITOR` if your environment variable `$EDITOR` points to an editor which opens an X11 window itself.

### Various commands

#### Number of context lines in the diff dialog

For the diff dialog, &cervisia; uses the option `-U` to `diff`. This lets `diff` show only a limited number of lines around each difference region. Here you can set the argument to `-U`.

#### Additional options for cvs diff

Here you can add additional arguments to the `diff`. A popular example is `-b` which lets `diff` ignore changes in the amount of whitespace.

#### Tab width in diff dialog

In the diff dialog, tab characters present in your file or in the output of the `diff` command are expanded into a fixed number of space characters. By default, each tab is replaced by eight spaces, but here you can setup a different number.

#### External diff frontend

When you use any of the features which show the diff dialog, like View Difference to Repository..., &cervisia; invokes its internal diff frontend. If you prefer a different one, like Kompare, TkDiff, or xxdiff, you can configure this here.

#### Start File Status automatically

When you check this option, the File Status command is started whenever you open a sandbox. As this command may need some time and also needs a connection to the server for remote repositories (making it unusable for offline usage), you can set this option separately for local and remote repositories.

#### Timeout after which a progress dialog appears

Practically all &CVS; commands started in a sandbox which belongs to a remote repository need a connection to the &CVS; server. This is affected by delays from the network connection or a high load on the server. For this reason, for commands like View Difference to repository... &cervisia; opens a dialog which indicates that the command is still running and which allows you to abort it. Furthermore, this dialog is used to show you error messages from &CVS;. As this dialog may become annoying after some time, it is shown only after a certain timeout which is 4 seconds by default. Here you can change this value.

#### Default compression level

The `cvs` client compresses files and patches when they are transferred over a network. With the command line option `-z`, the compression level can be set. You can setup &cervisia; to use this option by configuring the level here. The value set here is used only as a default; additionally there is a per-repository setting available in Repository Repositories....

### Look'n'feel

#### Split main window horizontally

&cervisia;'s main window is normally splitted vertically into a window with the file tree and one with the output. Alternatively, you can arrange them horizontally.

#### Font for protocol window

This is the font used in the protocol window. This is the window showing the output of the `cvs` client.

#### Font for annotate view

This is the font used in the annotate view.

#### Font for diff view

This is the font used in diff dialogs.

## Appendix

### Ignored files

In its main file tree, &cervisia; does not display all files which are actually there. This is analog to `cvs` itself and helps to avoid clutter caused by uninteresting stuff like object files. &cervisia; tries to mimic `cvs`'s behavior as close as possible, i.e. it gets ignore lists from the following sources:

- A static list of entries which includes things like `*.o` and `core`. For details, see the &CVS; documentation.

- The file ``$HOME`/.cvsignore`.

- The environment variable `$CVSIGNORE`.

- The `.cvsignore` file in the respective folder.

`cvs` itself additionally looks up entries in ``$CVSROOT`/CVSROOT/cvsignore`, but this is a file on the server, and &cervisia; should be able to start up offline. If you are working with a group that prefers to use an ignore list on the server, it's probably a good idea to take a look which patterns are listed there and to put them into the `.cvsignore` file in your home folder.

### Further information and support

- &CVS; comes with a complete set of documentation in the form of info pages, known as "The Cederqvist". If it is properly installed, you get browse it by typing in `info:/cvs` into the locationbar of kdehelp, khelpcenter resp. Alternative, you can just choose Help CVS Info in &cervisia;. An online HTML version of the Cederqvist is available on the web.

  As this book is maintained together with &CVS;, it is normally the most up-to-date reference. Nevertheless I recommend considering other documentation for learning to use &CVS;, in partical the following.

- Karl Fogel has written the excellent book Open Source Development with CVS. About half of this book is about the development process of Open Source software. The other half is a technical documentation of &CVS;. Thankfully, the technical part of the book has been made freely redistributable under the GPL, so that you can download a HTML version of it. A list of errata is available on the webpage mentioned above.

- &CVS; issues are discussed on a dedicated mailing list.

- There is USENET group `comp.software.config-mgmt` dedicated to configuration management in general. &CVS; is only marginally a topic in this group, but nevertheless it may be interesting for discussing merits of various revision control systems compared to &CVS;.

- Last but not least, there is a (low traffic) &cervisia; mailing list.

### Command Reference

#### The File Menu

File Open Sandbox...

  Opens a sandbox in the main window.

File Recent sandboxes

  Opens one of the sandboxes that were in use recently.

File Insert ChangeLog entry...

  Opens the ChangeLog editor, prepared such that you can add a new entry with the current date.

&Ctrl;U File Update

  Runs 'cvs update' on selected files and changes the status and revision numbers in the listing accordingly.

F5 File Status

  Runs 'cvs -n update' on selected files and changes the status and revision numbers in the listing accordingly.

File Edit

  Opens the selected file in your editor.

File Resolve...

  Opens a dialog for the selected file which allows you to resolve merge conflicts in it.

# File Commit...

  Allows you to commit the selected files.

+ File Add to Repository...

  Allows you to add the selected files to the repository.

File Add binary...

  Allows you to add the selected files to the repository as binaries (`cvs add`-kb``).

- File Remove from Repository...

  Allows you to remove the selected files from the repository.

File Revert

  Discards any local changes you have made to the selected files and reverts to the version in the repository (Option `-C` to `cvs update`).

&Ctrl;Q File Exit

  Quits &cervisia;.

#### The View Menu

Escape View Stop

  Aborts any running subprocesses.

&Ctrl;L View Browse Log...

  Shows the revision tree of the selected file.

&Ctrl;A View Annotate...

  Shows an annotated view of the selected file, i.e. a view where you can for each line see which author modified it last.

&Ctrl;D View Difference to repository...

  Shows the differences between the selected file in the sandbox and the revision you last updated (BASE).

View Last Change...

  Shows the differences between the revision of the selected file you last updated (BASE) and the revision before.

View History...

  Shows the &CVS; history as reported by the server.

View Unfold file tree

  Opens all branches in the file tree so that you can see all files and folders.

View Fold file tree

  Closes all branches in the file tree.

#### The Advanced Menu

Advanced Tag/Branch...

  Tags or branches the selected files.

Advanced Delete tag...

  Removes a given tag from the selected files.

Advanced Update to Tag/Date...

  Brings the selected files to a given tag or date, making it sticky.

Advanced Update to HEAD...

  Brings the selected files to the respective HEAD revision.

Advanced Merge...

  Merges either a given branch or the modifications between two tags into the selected files.

Advanced Add watch...

  Adds a watch for a set of events on the selected files.

Advanced Remove watch...

  Removes a watch for a set of events from the selected files.

Advanced Show watchers

  Lists the watchers of the selected files.

Advanced Edit

  Runs `cvs edit` on the selected files.

Advanced Unedit

  Runs `cvs unedit` on the selected files.

Advanced Show editors

  Runs `cvs editors` on the selected files.

Advanced Lock

  Locks the selected files.

Advanced Unlock

  Unlocks the selected files.

Advanced Create patch against repository...

  Creates a patch from the modifications in your sandbox.

#### The Repository Menu

Repository Checkout...

  Opens a dialog which allows you to checkout a module from a repository.

Repository Import...

  Opens a dialog which allows you to import a package into the repository.

Repository Repositories...

  Configures a list of repositories you often use and how to access them.

#### The Settings Menu

Settings Configure Shortcuts...

  Opens a dialog for configuring keybindings.

Settings Configure Cervisia...

  Opens a dialog for customizing &cervisia;.

Settings Create folders on update

  Determines whether updates create folders in the sandbox which weren't there before (Option `-d` to `cvs update`).

Settings Prune empty folders on update

  Determines whether updates remove empty folders in the sandbox. (Option `-P` to `cvs update`).

Settings Update recursively

  Determines whether updates are recursive (Option `-r` to `cvs update`).

Settings Commit and remove recursively

  Determines whether commits and removes are recursive (Option `-r` to `cvs add`, `cvs remove` resp.).

Settings Do cvs edit automatically when necessary

  Determines whether `cvs edit` is executed automatically whenever you edit a file.

#### The Help Menu

F1 Help Cervisia Handbook

  Invokes the KDE Help system starting at the &cervisia; help pages. (this document).

Help Report Bug...

  Opens the Bug report dialog.

Help About &cervisia;

  This will display version and author information.

Help About KDE

  This displays the KDE version and other basic information.

Help CVS Manual

  Opens the &CVS; info pages in the KDE help system.

## Credits And Licenses

&underFDL;