7.4.1 The Normal way to Rename

The normal way to move a file is to copy old to new, and then issue the normal CVS commands to remove old from the repository, and add new to it.

$ mv old new
$ cvs remove old
$ cvs add new
$ cvs commit -m "Renamed old to new" old new

This is the simplest way to move a file, it is not error-prone, and it preserves the history of what was done. Note that to access the history of the file you must specify the old or the new name, depending on what portion of the history you are accessing. For example, cvs log old will give the log up until the time of the rename.

When new is committed its revision numbers will start again, usually at 1.1, so if that bothers you, use the ‘-r rev’ option to commit. For more information see Assigning revisions.