A.12 export—Export sources from CVS, similar to checkout

• Synopsis: export [-flNnR] [-r rev|-D date] [-k subst] [-d dir] module…
• Requires: repository.
• Changes: current directory.

This command is a variant of checkout; use it when you want a copy of the source for module without the CVS administrative directories. For example, you might use export to prepare source for shipment off-site. This command requires that you specify a date or tag (with ‘-D’ or ‘-r’), so that you can count on reproducing the source you ship to others (and thus it always prunes empty directories).

One often would like to use ‘-kv’ with cvs export. This causes any keywords to be expanded such that an import done at some other site will not lose the keyword revision information. But be aware that doesn’t handle an export containing binary files correctly. Also be aware that after having used ‘-kv’, one can no longer use the ident command (which is part of the RCS suite—see ident(1)) which looks for keyword strings. If you want to be able to use ident you must not use ‘-kv’.