3.1.1 Creating a directory tree from a number of files

When you begin using CVS, you will probably already have several projects that can be put under CVS control. In these cases the easiest way is to use the import command. An example is probably the easiest way to explain how to use it. If the files you want to install in CVS reside in wdir, and you want them to appear in the repository as $CVSROOT/yoyodyne/rdir, you can do this:

$ cd wdir
$ cvs import -m "Imported sources" yoyodyne/rdir yoyo start

Unless you supply a log message with the ‘-m’ flag, CVS starts an editor and prompts for a message. The string ‘yoyo’ is a vendor tag, and ‘start’ is a release tag. They may fill no purpose in this context, but since CVS requires them they must be present. See Tracking sources, for more information about them.

You can now verify that it worked, and remove your original source directory.

$ cd ..
$ cvs checkout yoyodyne/rdir       # Explanation below
$ diff -r wdir yoyodyne/rdir
$ rm -r wdir

Erasing the original sources is a good idea, to make sure that you do not accidentally edit them in wdir, bypassing CVS. Of course, it would be wise to make sure that you have a backup of the sources before you remove them.

The checkout command can either take a module name as argument (as it has done in all previous examples) or a path name relative to $CVSROOT, as it did in the example above.

It is a good idea to check that the permissions CVS sets on the directories inside $CVSROOT are reasonable, and that they belong to the proper groups. See File permissions.

If some of the files you want to import are binary, you may want to use the wrappers features to specify which files are binary and which are not. See Wrappers.