2.5 Checking Out Files

   

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CVS stores projects and files in a central repository, but you work from a working copy, called a sandbox , in your local directories. You create that sandbox with cvs checkout .

CVS creates the sandbox as a subdirectory of your current working directory. I like to create a directory to contain all my CVS sandboxes, and I use ~/cvs . From whichever directory you want a sandbox created in, run the command:

 cvs -d   repository_path   checkout   project_name   

This command checks out all files for the named project. If your repository is on the local machine, the repository path is the full pathname of the CVS repository. If your repository is on a remote server, see the earlier Section 2.4. Example 2-10 shows a local checkout.

Example 2-10. Local repository checkout

 $  mkdir ~/cvs  $  cd ~/cvs  $  cvs -d /var/lib/cvsroot checkout example  cvs checkout: Updating example U example/file1 U example/file2 

The checkout command puts a copy of the project's files and subdirectories into a directory named for the project, created in the current working directory. It also puts some administrative files of its own in a subdirectory of the project directory, called CVS .

You can check out an individual file or subdirectory of a project by replacing project_name with the pathname to the file or directory, from the project's root directory. See Chapter 3 for more information.

CVS stores the repository path as part of the sandbox, so you should never again need to use -d repository_path in commands executed within that sandbox.

If you are checking out a sandbox from a remote repository, the repository path is slightly different than the path shown in the previous example. Example 2-11 shows a checkout from a remote repository.

Example 2-11. Remote repository checkout

 $  cvs -d :ext:cvs:/home/cvs checkout cvsbook  cvs server: Updating cvsbook U cvsbook/1-introduction.html U cvsbook/2-installation.html U cvsbook/3-quickstart.html U cvsbook/acknowledgements U cvsbook/outline_schedule U cvsbook/proposal U cvsbook/sources U cvsbook/template 

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