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“CVS Interview Questions and Answers will guide us now that Concurrent Versions System (CVS), also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, is a free software revision control system in the field of software development. Version control system software keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers (potentially widely separated in space and/or time) to collaborate. Learn more about CVS by this CVS Interview Questions with Answers guide”



27 CVS Questions And Answers

1⟩ What is the difference between CVSNT and CVS?

☛ CVSNT is the Windows OS version of cvs.

☛ From a SCM perpective, they share similarity in purpose, commands including syntax and functionality.

☛ Both are freeware.

☛ Installation is a breeze for anyone who has a working knowledge of *NIX and Windows.

☛ Both can be accessed through clients.

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2⟩ How to setup a CVS server?

CVS is not setup as a separate daemon that listens continuously for a connection, it uses Inetd (Internet Daemon) to bind a connection request to the port used for CVS (2401) to the CVS server. The following commands should be executed as root. The file that supplies the information about which ports map to which services is /etc/services, edit this file and add the line:

☛ cvspserver 2401/tcp # CVS Pserver

☛ It may already be listed, in which case, leave it alone. Edit the file /etc/inetd.conf, add the line:

☛ cvspserver stream tcp nowait root /usr/local/bin/cvs cvs --allow-root=/home/jiansen/cvs pserver

☛ This causes inetd to start up a new cvs server and connect the server to the incoming connection request.

☛ killall -HUP inetd

This restarts inetd. Logon to some other machine and test the access using the cvs login command.

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3⟩ How to let other people join your project?

To allow all trusted CVS users access to the repository, we will create a cvsusers group. To do this add:

cvsusers:x:4901:jiansen,tom to /etc/group to create a cvsusers group, and add jiansen and tom to it. Note, 4901 is not special, it is any number not already in use as a group id or user id - I used it because it is the default port for a CVS pserver, which creates a nice link between the two.

cd /home/jiansen

find cvs/ -exec chgrp cvsusers {} ;

find $CVSROOT -type d -exec chmod g+s {} ;

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4⟩ How can I get my own copy of the JMRI code?

To get a copy of the source for your own use, you can use "anonymous checkout". For a command line cvs client, make a new directory for the project, change to it, and tell CVS you exist with cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@jmri.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/jmri login This "login" line is only needed once; after that, it is remembered on your local machine. You may be asked for a password. If so, just hit return, as the empty password will be accepted. You can then get a copy of the code with cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@jmri.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/jmri co all If you're using a GUI-based client like WinCVS, pull down the "admin" menu and select "command line" to get a place to type these commands. On other computers, you can type them directly on the command line.

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5⟩ How can I bring my copy of the JMRI code up to date?

People contribute updates to the JMRI code almost every week. Your local copy doesn't get these changes until you ask for them, so that you've got something stable to work with. If you have an existing copy of the code and want to update it to the most recent contents of CVS, the CVS command is: cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@jmri.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/jmri -q update -dA

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6⟩ How can I bring my copy of JMRI code up to date?

People contribute updates to the JMRI code almost every week. Your local copy doesn't get these changes until you ask for them, so that you've got something stable to work with. If you have an existing copy of the code and want to update it to the most recent contents of CVS, the CVS command is: cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@jmri.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/jmri -q update -dA

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7⟩ How do I update an existing copy of the source to the current version?

As the common code changes, you might want to update your copy to contain the lastest version. To do that, use: cvs -q update Any changes will be merged into the files on your disk, and you should then be up-to-date with your own changes still present. The "-q" option removes a lot of informational messages as CVS enters the various directories in the project; the command still works if you omit it, but it will be harder to see any real error messages.

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8⟩ How does the CVS work?

CVS works not by keeping track of multiple copies of source code files, but by maintaining a single copy and a record of all the changes. When a developer specifies a particular version, CVS can reconstruct that version from the recorded changes.

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9⟩ How do I get a copy of CVS?

Many computers come with CVS installed, including Linux and MacOS X. If you're using Windows, you will need to install a CVS "client" program like WinCVS. A recent version can be downloaded from: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/cvsgui/WinCvs120.zip.

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10⟩ What is revision control system (RCS)?

CVS uses another program, Revision Control System (RCS), to do the actual revision management that is, keeping the record of changes that goes with each source code file.

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11⟩ How to create a CVS project?

Suppose my project source code at /home/jiansen/project

1) mkdir /home/jiansen/cvs

2) export cvsroot=/home/jiansen/cvs

3) cvs init

4) cd /home/jiansen/project

4) cvs import -m "Initialising sources in CVS" project jiansen start

Now I am able to check out cvs project via cvs co project.

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13⟩ What are these messages about .DS_Store files?

If you're using MacOS X, CVS may give you messages about ".DS_Store" files. These are used to keep track of window layouts, etc. To suppress these messages, just create a file in your home directory called ".cvsignore" and add a line of ".DS_Store" to it (no quotes). CVS will then ignore all .DS_Store files in all of your checked-out directory trees.

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14⟩ List main CVS commands?

CVSROOT environment variable, setenv CSVROOT (csh) or export CSVROOT= (bash)

If you have changed a file in CVS and want to commit your changes to the repository, type:

cvs commit filename

Checkout package or module:

cvs checkout module

To add a new file to the repository, first create the file in your checked out copy and then type:

cvs add -m'Brief description.' filename

Deleting a file involves similar steps. First delete the file out of your checked out copy, then use cvs remove to mark it as deleted, and then use cvs commit to commit the change:

rm filename

cvs remove filename

cvs commit filename

You can combine the first two steps by using:

cvs remove -f filename

If you want to get a report on what's changed between your copy and the repository, but don't want CVS do actually do anything, use the command:

cvs -n update

To see the differences (in diff format) between a file you've modified and the last committed revision in the repository, use:

cvs diff filename

(You can also give cvs diff multiple filenames or even whole directories and it will produce a series of diffs.) cvs diff takes the standard flags to specify what type of diff to produce, so:

cvs diff -u filename

will produce a unified context diff (the type that most people prefer).

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15⟩ How to access CVS server?

We can set our CVSROOT on a remote machine to the following.

Example:

let tom access my cvs export CVSROOT=:pserver:tom@mynode.ca:/home/jiansen/cvs

cvs login

Here password is the same as system password. We can setup specific password for cvs.

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16⟩ What is the terminology of CVS?

CVS labels a single project (set of related files) that it manages as a module. A CVS server stores the modules it manages in its repository. Programmers acquire copies of modules by checking out. The checked-out files serve as a working copy, sandbox or workspace. Changes to the working copy are reflected in the repository by committing them. To update is to acquire or merge the changes in the repository with the working copy.

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17⟩ What are the features of CVS?

CVS uses a client-server architecture: a server stores the current version(s) of a project and its history and clients connect to the server in order to "check out" a complete copy of the project, work on this copy and then later "check in" their changes. Typically, the client and server connect over a LAN or over the Internet, but client and server may both run on the same machine if CVS has the task of keeping track of the version history of a project with only local developers. The server software normally runs on Unix (although at least the CVSNT server also supports various flavours of Microsoft Windows), while CVS clients may run on any major operating-system platform.

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18⟩ What does CVS server do if the check in operation succeeds?

If the check in operation succeeds, then the version numbers of all files involved automatically increment, and the CVS-server writes a user-supplied description line, the date and the author's name to its log files. CVS can also run external, user-specified log processing scripts following each commit. These scripts are installed by an entry in CVS's loginfo file, which can trigger email notification or convert the log data into a Web-based format.

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19⟩ What are the other things a CVS can do?

CVS can also maintain different "branches" of a project. For instance, a released version of the software project may form one branch, used for bug fixes, while a version under current development, with major changes and new features, can form a separate branch.

CVS uses delta compression for efficient storage of different versions of the same file. This works well with large text files with few changes from one version to the next. This is usually the case for source code files. On the other hand, when CVS is told to store a file as binary, it will keep each individual version on the server. Storing files as binary is important in order to avoid corruption of binary files.

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20⟩ What is the development status of CVS?

There have been no official recent announcements indicating the project status:

☛ Active development of CVS has traditionally followed with new releases correlating directly with requests for new features or bug reports,

☛ The latest version was released 8 May 2008 (6 years, 10 months and 25 days ago).

☛ Since 2008 there have been some maintenance bugfixes in the CVS project's own CVS repository.

☛ There are no bugs or enhancements reported since the last code change that are complete (fulfill the requirement for a fix). There are a total of 9 reports, most of which are questions. Questions are typically answered quickly if asked on the mailing list.

☛ The info-cvs mailing list actively answer questions.

☛ Links on the official CVS page that point to the external web site ximbiot.com, such as 'Current Events,' are dead, as is the CVS.

☛ Archived information is available using new links.

☛ The last message in the Cvs-Announce mailing list was posted on 8 May 2008.

☛ The last code checkin to the CVS code repository occurred on 30 March 2011.

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