1 First, read the README file. If you're still happy...
3 First you need to obtain and install the CVS executables. If you got
4 a distribution which contains executables, consult the installation
5 instructions for that distribution. If you got source code, do not
6 panic. On many platforms building CVS from source code is a
7 straightforward process requiring no programming knowledge. See the
8 section BUILDING FROM SOURCE CODE at the end of this file, which
9 includes a list of platforms which have been tested.
11 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13 1) Take a look at the CVS documentation, if desired. For most
14 purposes you want doc/cvs.texinfo, also known as _Version Management
15 with CVS_ by Per Cederqvist et al. Looking at it might be as simple
16 as "info cvs" but this will depend on your installation; see README
19 See what CVS can do for you, and if it fits your environment (or can
20 possibly be made to fit your environment). If things look good,
21 continue on. Alternately, just give CVS a try first then figure out
24 2) Set the CVSROOT environment variable to where you want to put your
25 source repository. See the "Setting up the repository" section of
26 the Cederqvist manual for details, but the quick summary is just to
27 pick some directory. We'll use /src/master as an example. For
28 users of a POSIX shell (sh/bash/ksh) on unix, the following
29 commands can be placed in user's ~/.profile, ~/.bash_profile file;
30 or in the site-wide /etc/profile:
32 CVSROOT=/src/master; export CVSROOT
34 For C shell users on unix place the following commands in the
35 user's ~/.cshrc, ~/.login, or /etc/chsrc file:
37 setenv CVSROOT /src/master
39 For Windows users, supposing the repository will be in
40 d:\src\master, place the following line in c:\autoexec.bat. On
41 Windows 95, autoexec.bat might not already exist. In that case,
42 just create a new file containing the following line.
44 set CVSROOT=:local:d:\src\master
46 If these environment variables are not already set in your current
47 shell, set them now by typing the above line at the command prompt
48 (or source the login script you just edited).
49 The instructions for the remaining steps assume that you have set
50 the CVSROOT environment variable.
52 3) Create the master source repository. Again, the details are in
53 the "Setting up the repository" section of cvs.texinfo; the
58 In this and subsequent examples we use "$" to indicate the command
59 prompt; do not type the "$".
61 4) It might be a good idea to jump right in and put some sources or
62 documents directly under CVS control. From within the top-level
63 directory of your source tree, run the following commands:
65 $ cvs import -m "test distribution" ccvs CVS_DIST CVS-TEST
67 (Those last three items are, respectively, a repository location, a
68 "vendor tag", and a "release tag". You don't need to understand
69 them yet, but read the section "Starting new projects" in the
70 Cederqvist manual for details).
72 5) Having done step 4, one should be able to checkout a fresh copy of the
73 sources you just imported and hack away at the sources with the
79 This will make the directory "ccvs" in your current directory and
80 populate it with the appropriate files and directories.
82 6) You may wish to customize the various administrative files, in particular
83 modules. See the Cederqvist manual for details.
85 7) Read the NEWS file to see what's new.
89 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
91 BUILDING FROM SOURCE CODE
95 CVS has been tested on the following platforms. The most recent
96 version of CVS reported to have been tested is indicated, but more
97 recent versions of CVS probably will work too. Please send updates to
98 this list to bug-cvs@gnu.org (doing so in the form of a diff
99 to this file, or at least exact suggested text, is encouraged).
100 "tested" means, at a minimum, that CVS compiles and appears to work on
101 simple (manual) testing. In many cases it also means "make check"
102 and/or "make remotecheck" passes, but we don't try to list the
103 platforms for which that is true.
106 DEC Alpha running OSF/1 version 1.3 using cc (about 1.4A2)
107 DEC Alpha running OSF/1 version 2.0 (1.8)
108 DEC Alpha running OSF/1 version 2.1 (about 1.4A2)
109 DEC Alpha running OSF/1 version 3.0 (1.5.95) (footnote 7)
110 DEC Alpha running OSF/1 version 3.2 (1.9)
111 Alpha running alpha-dec-osf4.0 (1.10)
112 DEC Alpha running Digital UNIX v4.0C using gcc 2.7.2.2 (1.9.14)
113 DEC Alpha running VMS 6.2 (1.8.85 client-only)
114 Alpha running NetBSD 1.2E (1.10)
116 J90 (CVS 970215 snapshot)
117 T3E (CVS 970215 snapshot)
119 HP 9000/710 running HP-UX 8.07A using gcc (about 1.4A2)
120 HPPA running HP-UX 9 (1.8)
121 HPPA 1.1 running HP-UX A.09.03 (1.5.95) (footnote 8)
122 HPPA 1.1 running HP-UX A.09.04 (1.7.1)
123 HPPA running HP-UX 9.05 (1.9)
124 HPPA running HP-UX 10.01 (1.7)
125 HPPA running HP-UX 10.20 (1.10.7)
128 Solaris 2.4 using gcc (about 1.4A2)
130 UnixWare v1.1.1 using gcc (about 1.4A2)
131 Unixware 2.1 (1.8.86)
134 Linux (kernel 1.2.x) (1.8.86)
135 Linux (kernel 2.0.x, RedHat 4.2) (1.10)
136 Linux (kernel 2.0.x, RedHat 5.x) (1.10)
137 Linux (kernel 2.2.x, RedHat 6.x) (1.10.8)
138 Linux (kernel 2.2.x, RedHat 7.x) (1.11)
140 FreeBSD 2.1.5-stable (1.8.87)
142 SCO Unix 3.2.4.2, gcc 2.7.2 (1.8.87) (footnote 4)
143 SCO OpenServer 5.0.5 (1.10.2)
144 Sequent DYNIX/ptx4.0 (1.10 or so) (remove -linet)
145 Sequent Dynix/PTX 4.1.4 (1.9.20 or so + patches)
146 Lynx 2.3.0 080695 (1.6.86) (footnote 9)
147 Windows NT 3.51 (1.8.86 client; 1.8.3 local)
148 Windows NT 3.51 service pack 4 (1.9)
149 Windows NT 3.51 service pack 5 (1.9) -- DOES NOT WORK (footnote 11)
150 Windows NT 4.0 (1.9 client and local)
151 Windows NT 4.0 (1.11 client and local - build & test, but no test suite)
152 Windows 95 (1.9 client and local)
153 QNX (1.9.1 + patches for strippath() and va_list)
154 OS/2 Version 3 using IBM C/C++ Tools 2.01 (1.8.86 + patches, client)
155 OS/2 Version 3 using EMX 0.9c (1.9.22, client)
156 OS/2 Version 3 using Watcom version ? (? - has this been tested?)
158 Sun 3 running SunOS 4.1.1_U1 w/ bundled K&R /usr/5bin/cc (1.8.86+)
159 NextSTEP 3.3p1 (1.8.87)
160 Lynx 2.3.0 062695 (1.6.86) (footnote 9)
161 NetBSD/mac68k (1.9.28)
163 Data General AViiON running dgux 5.4R2.10 (1.5)
164 Data General AViiON running dgux 5.4R3.10 (1.7.1)
165 Harris Nighthawk 5800 running CX/UX 7.1 (1.5) (footnote 6)
167 DECstation running Ultrix 4.2a (1.4.90)
168 DECstation running Ultrix 4.3 (1.10)
169 SGI running Irix 4.0.5H using gcc and cc (about 1.4A2) (footnote 2)
170 SGI running Irix 5.3 (1.10)
171 SGI running Irix 6.2 using SGI MIPSpro 6.2 and beta 7.2 compilers (1.9)
172 SGI running Irix-6.2 (1.9.8)
173 SGI running IRIX 6.4 (1.10)
174 SGI running IRIX 6.5 (1.10.7)
175 Siemens-Nixdorf RM600 running SINIX-Y (1.6)
177 IBM RS/6000 running AIX 3.1 using gcc and cc (1.6.86)
178 IBM RS/6000 running AIX 3.2.5 (1.8)
179 IBM RS/6000 running AIX 4.1 (1.9)
180 IBM RS/6000 running AIX 4.3 (1.10.7)
181 Lynx 2.3.1 120495 (1.6.86) (footnote 9)
182 Lynx 2.5 (1.9) (footnote 10)
183 MkLinux DR3 GENERIC #6 (1.10.5.1) (presumably LinuxPPC too)
185 Sun SPARC running SunOS 4.1.x (1.10)
186 Sun SPARCstation 10 running Solaris 2.3 using gcc and cc (about 1.4A2)
187 Sun SPARCstation running Solaris 2.4 using gcc and cc (about 1.5.91)
188 Sun SPARC running Solaris 2.5 (1.8.87)
189 Sun SPARC running Solaris 2.5.1 using gcc 2.7.2.2 (1.9.14)
190 Sun SPARC running Solaris 2.6 (1.10.7)
191 Sun UltraSPARC running Solaris 2.6 using gcc 2.8.1 (1.10)
193 Sun SPARC running Linux 2.0.17, gcc 2.7.2 (1.8.87)
194 Sun UltraSPARC running Solaris 2.8 using gcc 2.95.3
196 VAX running VMS 6.2 (1.9+patches, client-only)
197 (see README.VMS for information on necessary hacks).
200 Some Irix 4.0 systems may core dump in malloc while running
201 CVS. We believe this is a bug in the Irix malloc. You can
202 workaround this bug by linking with "-lmalloc" if necessary.
205 (footnote 4) Comment out the include of sys/time.h in src/server.c. (1.4.93)
206 You also may have to make sure TIME_WITH_SYS_TIME is undef'ed.
208 (footnote 6) Build in ucb universe with COFF compiler tools. Put
209 /usr/local/bin first in PATH while doing a configure, make
210 and install of GNU diffutils-2.7, rcs-5.7, then cvs-1.5.
212 (footnote 7) Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@pilgrim.umass.edu> reports
213 success with this configure command:
214 CC=cc CFLAGS='-O2 -Olimit 2000 -std1' ./configure --verbose alpha-dec-osf
216 (footnote 8) Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@pilgrim.umass.edu> reports
217 success with this configure command:
218 CC=cc CFLAGS='+O2 -Aa -D_HPUX_SOURCE' ./configure --verbose hppa1.1-hp-hpux
221 Had to configure with ./configure --host=<arch>-lynx.
223 In src/cvs.h, protected the waitpid prototype with ifdef _POSIX_SOURCE.
224 (I might try building with gcc -mposix -D_POSIX_SOURCE.)
226 LynxOS has <dirent.h>, but you don't want to use it.
227 You want to use <sys/dir.h> instead.
228 So after running configure I had to undef HAVE_DIRENT_H and
229 define HAVE_SYS_DIR_H.
232 Had to compile with "make LIBS=-lbsd" (to get gethostbyname
236 when I do a `cvs init' I get this message:
237 ci: 'RCS/loginfo,v' is not a regular file
238 ci: RCS/loginfo,v: Invalid argument
239 cvs [init aborted]: failed to checkin n:/safe/CVSROOT/loginfo
241 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
243 Building from source code under Unix:
245 1) Some combinations of Automake and Autoconf versions may break the CVS build
246 if file timestamps aren't set correctly, so you may wish to run
247 noautomake.sh to set the timestamps and avoid attempting to run the
248 autotools on your system, especially if you are building from source
249 checked out from CVS:
251 $ ./noautomake.sh --noautoconf
253 The CVS Makefiles and configure script were built using Automake 1.6.3 and
254 Autoconf 2.53, respectively. Other combinations of autotool versions may
261 You can specify an alternate destination to override the default with
264 $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/gnu
266 or some path that is more appropriate for your site. The default prefix
267 value is "/usr/local", with binaries in sub-directory "bin", manual
268 pages in sub-directory "man", and libraries in sub-directory "lib".
270 A normal build of CVS will create an executable which supports
271 local, server, or client CVS (if you don't know the difference,
272 it is described in the Repository chapter of doc/cvs.texinfo). If
273 you do not intend to use client or server CVS, you may want to
274 prevent these features from being included in the executable you
275 build. You can do this with the --disable-client and
276 --disable-server options:
278 $ ./configure --disable-client --disable-server
280 Typically this can reduce the size of the executable by around 30%.
282 If you are building CVS with the server enabled, you can disable
283 server flow control using the --disable-server-flow-control
284 If you are working with a large remote repository and a 'cvs
285 checkout' is swamping your network and memory, enable flow control.
286 You will end up with even less probability of a consistent checkout
287 (see Concurrency in cvs.texinfo), but CVS doesn't try to guarantee
288 that anyway. The master server process will monitor how far it is
289 getting behind, if it reaches the high water mark, it will signal
290 the child process to stop generating data when convenient (ie: no
291 locks are held, currently at the beginning of a new directory).
292 Once the buffer has drained sufficiently to reach the low water
293 mark, it will be signalled to start again. You may override the
294 default hi/low watermarks here too by passing
295 '<lowwater>,<highwater>', in bytes, as an argument to
296 --enable-server-flow-control. The low water mark defaults to one
297 megabyte and the high water mark defaults to two megabytes.
299 $ ./configure --enable-server-flow-control=1M,2M
301 The --with-tmpdir argument to configure may be used to set a
302 specific directory for use as a default temporary directory. If not
303 set, configure will pick the first directory it finds which it has
304 read, write, and execute permissions to from $TMPDIR, $TMP, $TEMP,
305 /tmp, and /var/tmp, in that order. Failing that, it will use /tmp.
307 The --with-umask argument to configure can be used to change
308 the default umask used by the CVS server executable.
310 Unlike previous versions of CVS, you do not need to install RCS
313 If you are using gcc and are planning to modify CVS, you may want to
314 configure with -Wall; see the file HACKING for details.
316 If you have Kerberos 4 installed, you can specify the location of
317 the header files and libraries using the --with-krb4=DIR option.
318 DIR should be a directory with subdirectories include and lib
319 holding the Kerberos 4 header files and libraries, respectively.
320 The default value is /usr/kerberos.
322 If you want to enable support for encryption over Kerberos, use
323 the --enable-encryption option. This option is disabled by
326 If you want to disable automatic dependency tracking in the makefiles,
327 use the '--disable-dependency-tracking' option:
329 $ ./configure --disable-dependency-tracking
331 This avoids problems on some platforms. See the note at the end of this
334 Try './configure --help' for further information on its usage.
336 NOTE ON CVS's USE OF NDBM:
338 By default, CVS uses some built-in ndbm emulation code to allow
339 CVS to work in a heterogeneous environment. However, if you have
340 a very large modules database, this may not work well. You will
341 need to supply the --disable-cvs-ndbm option to configure to
342 accomplish this. If you do this, the following comments apply. If
343 not, you may safely skip these comments.
345 If you configure CVS to use the real ndbm(3) libraries and
346 you do not have them installed in a "normal" place, you will
347 probably want to get the GNU version of ndbm (gdbm) and install
348 that before running the CVS configure script. Be aware that the
349 GDBM 1.5 release does NOT install the <ndbm.h> header file included
350 with the release automatically. You may have to install it by hand.
352 If you configure CVS to use the ndbm(3) libraries, you cannot
353 compile CVS with GNU cc (gcc) on Sun-4 SPARC systems. However, gcc
354 2.0 may have fixed this limitation if -fpcc-struct-return is
355 defined. When using gcc on other systems to compile CVS, you *may*
356 need to specify the -fpcc-struct-return option to gcc (you will
357 *know* you have to if "cvs checkout" core dumps in some ndbm
358 function). You can do this as follows:
360 $ CC='gcc -fpcc-struct-return' ./configure
362 for sh, bash, and ksh users and:
364 % setenv CC 'gcc -fpcc-struct-return'
367 for csh and tcsh users.
369 END OF NOTE FOR NDBM GUNK.
371 3) Edit src/options.h. The defaults should be reasonable, and in fact
372 if you are lazy you can safely skip this step.
378 This will (hopefully) make the needed CVS binaries within the
379 "src" directory. If something fails for your system, and you want
380 to submit a bug report, you may wish to include your
381 "config.status" file, your host type, operating system and
382 compiler information, make output, and anything else you think
385 4a) Run the regression tests (optional).
387 You may also wish to validate the correctness of the new binary by
388 running the regression tests. If they succeed, that is nice to
389 know. However, if they fail, it doesn't tell you much. Often it
390 will just be a problem with running the tests on your machine,
391 rather than a problem with CVS. Unless you will have the time to
392 determine which of the two it is in case of failure, you might
393 want to save yourself the time and just not run the tests.
395 If you want to run the tests, see the file TESTS for more information.
397 5) Install the binaries/documentation:
401 Depending on your installation's configuration, you may need to be
404 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
406 Detailed information about your interaction with "configure":
408 The "configure" script and its interaction with its options and the
409 environment is described here. For more detailed documentation about
410 "configure", please run `./configure --help' or refer to the GNU Autoconf
413 Supported options are:
415 --srcdir=DIR Useful for compiling on many different
416 machines sharing one source tree.
417 --prefix=DIR The root of where to install the
418 various pieces of CVS (/usr/local).
419 --exec_prefix=DIR If you want executables in a
420 host-dependent place and shared
421 things in a host-independent place.
423 The following environment variables override configure's default
426 CC If not set, tries to use gcc first,
427 then cc. Also tries to use "-g -O"
428 as options, backing down to -g
429 alone if that doesn't work.
430 INSTALL If not set, tries to use "install", then
431 "./install-sh" as a final choice.
432 RANLIB If not set, tries to determine if "ranlib"
433 is available, choosing "echo" if it doesn't
435 YACC If not set, tries to determine if "bison"
436 is available, choosing "yacc" if it doesn't
439 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
441 Building from source code under Windows NT/95/98/2000:
443 You may find interesting information in windows-NT/README.
445 1) Using Microsoft Visual C++ 5.x, open the project `cvsnt.dsp',
446 in the top directory of the CVS distribution. If you have an older
447 version of Visual C++, take a look at windows-NT/README.
448 2) Choose "Build cvs.exe" from the "Project" menu.
449 3) MSVC will place the executable file cvs.exe in WinRel, or whatever
450 your target directory is.
452 * From the top level directory, with MSVC++ 6.0 installed, something like the
453 following also works:
456 C:\> nmake /f cvsnt.mak CFG="cvsnt - Win32 Debug"
458 * You might also try http://cvsgui.org & http://www.cvsnt.org
460 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
462 Building from source code under other platforms:
464 For OS/2, see os2/README and emx/README.
466 For VMS, see README.VMS
468 Mac OS X: Builds fine, just like UNIX.
470 For older versions of Mac OS, you might try http://cvsgui.org .
472 For a Java client, see jCVS (which is a separate package from CVS
473 itself, but which might be preferable to the Macintosh port mentioned
478 Builds are breaking on some systems (notably,
479 BSD/OS thor.sdrc.com 4.0.1 BSDI BSD/OS 4.0.1 Kernel #3: Thu Mar 9 11:29:16 EST 2000
480 ) due to Automake's dependency tracking code. The work around for this is to
481 comile without it by passing the '--disable-dependency-tracking' option to
484 $ ./configure --disable-dependency-tracking
486 This will allow a compile but make will no longer be tracking header
487 dependencies. This means that if you make any changes to header files you may
488 have to run 'make clean' before running a 'make' to get everything to compile.
490 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------