Anonymous CVS (or, as it is otherwise known, anoncvs) is a feature provided by the CVS utilities bundled
with FreeBSD for synchronizing with a remote CVS repository. Among other things, it
allows users of FreeBSD to perform, with no special privileges, read-only CVS operations
against one of the FreeBSD project's official anoncvs servers. To use it, one simply sets
the CVSROOT environment variable to point at the appropriate
anoncvs server, provides the well-known password “anoncvs” with the cvs login command, and then uses the cvs(1) command to
access it like any local repository.
Note: The cvs login command, stores the passwords that
are used for authenticating to the CVS server in a file called .cvspass in your HOME directory. If this
file does not exist, you might get an error when trying to use cvs
login for the first time. Just make an empty .cvspass
file, and retry to login.
While it can also be said that the CVSup and anoncvs services both perform essentially
the same function, there are various trade-offs which can influence the user's choice of
synchronization methods. In a nutshell, CVSup is much more
efficient in its usage of network resources and is by far the most technically
sophisticated of the two, but at a price. To use CVSup, a
special client must first be installed and configured before any bits can be grabbed, and
then only in the fairly large chunks which CVSup calls collections.
Anoncvs, by contrast, can be used to examine anything from
an individual file to a specific program (like ls or grep) by referencing the CVS module name. Of course, anoncvs is also only good for read-only operations on the CVS
repository, so if it is your intention to support local development in one repository
shared with the FreeBSD project bits then CVSup is really your
only option.
Configuring cvs(1) to use an
Anonymous CVS repository is a simple matter of setting the CVSROOT
environment variable to point to one of the FreeBSD project's anoncvs servers. At the time of this writing, the following
servers are available:
France:
:pserver:[email protected]:/home/ncvs (pserver (password
“anoncvs”), ssh (no password))
Japan:
:pserver:[email protected]:/home/ncvs (Use cvs
login and enter the password “anoncvs” when prompted.)
Taiwan:
:pserver:[email protected]:/home/ncvs (pserver (use cvs
login and enter any password when prompted), ssh (no password))
Since CVS allows one to “check out” virtually any version of the FreeBSD
sources that ever existed (or, in some cases, will exist), you need to be familiar with
the revision (-r) flag to cvs(1) and what some
of the permissible values for it in the FreeBSD Project repository are.
There are two kinds of tags, revision tags and branch tags. A revision tag refers to a
specific revision. Its meaning stays the same from day to day. A branch tag, on the other
hand, refers to the latest revision on a given line of development, at any given time.
Because a branch tag does not refer to a specific revision, it may mean something
different tomorrow than it means today.
Section A.7 contains revision tags that users might be
interested in. Again, none of these are valid for the Ports Collection since the Ports
Collection does not have multiple branches of development.
When you specify a branch tag, you normally receive the latest versions of the files
on that line of development. If you wish to receive some past version, you can do so by
specifying a date with the -D date flag. See the cvs(1) manual page for
more details.
While it really is recommended that you read the manual page for cvs(1) thoroughly
before doing anything, here are some quick examples which essentially show how to use
Anonymous CVS:
Example A-1. Checking Out Something from -CURRENT (ls(1)):
%setenv CVSROOT :pserver:[email protected]:/home/ncvs%cvs loginAt the prompt, enter any word for “password”.
%cvs co ls
Example A-2. Using SSH to check out the src/
tree:
%cvs -d [email protected]:/home/ncvs co src
The authenticity of host 'anoncvs.freebsd.org (128.46.156.46)' can't be established.
DSA key fingerprint is 52:02:38:1a:2f:a8:71:d3:f5:83:93:8d:aa:00:6f:65.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'anoncvs.freebsd.org' (DSA) to the list of known hosts.
Example A-3. Checking Out the Version of ls(1) in the 6-STABLE Branch:
%setenv CVSROOT :pserver:[email protected]:/home/ncvs%cvs loginAt the prompt, enter any word for “password”.
%cvs co -rRELENG_6 ls
Example A-4. Creating a List of Changes (as Unified Diffs) to ls(1)
%setenv CVSROOT :pserver:[email protected]:/home/ncvs%cvs loginAt the prompt, enter any word for “password”.
%cvs rdiff -u -rRELENG_5_3_0_RELEASE -rRELENG_5_4_0_RELEASE ls
Example A-5. Finding Out What Other Module Names Can Be Used:
%setenv CVSROOT :pserver:[email protected]:/home/ncvs%cvs loginAt the prompt, enter any word for “password”.
%cvs co modules%more modules/modules
