2.5 Multiple repositories

In some situations it is a good idea to have more than one repository, for instance if you have two development groups that work on separate projects without sharing any code. All you have to do to have several repositories is to specify the appropriate repository, using the CVSROOT environment variable, the ‘-d’ option to CVS, or (once you have checked out a working directory) by simply allowing CVS to use the repository that was used to check out the working directory (see Specifying a repository).

The big advantage of having multiple repositories is that they can reside on different servers. With CVS version 1.10, a single command cannot recurse into directories from different repositories. With development versions of CVS, you can check out code from multiple servers into your working directory. CVS will recurse and handle all the details of making connections to as many server machines as necessary to perform the requested command. Here is an example of how to set up a working directory:

cvs -d server1:/cvs co dir1
cd dir1
cvs -d server2:/root co sdir
cvs update

The cvs co commands set up the working directory, and then the cvs update command will contact server2, to update the dir1/sdir subdirectory, and server1, to update everything else.