Appendix DG1. The CVS Repository

The Postgres source code is stored and managed using the CVS code management system.

At least two methods, anonymous CVS and CVSup, are available to pull the CVS code tree from the Postgres server to your local machine.

CVS Tree Organization

Author: Written by Marc G. Fournier on 1998-11-05.

The command cvs checkout has a flag, -r, that lets you check out a certain revision of a module. This flag makes it easy to, for example, retrieve the sources that make up release 1.0 of the module `tc' at any time in the future:

$ cvs checkout -r REL6_4 tc
   

Tip: You can also check out a module as it was at any given date using the -D option.

When you tag more than one file with the same tag you can think about the tag as "a curve drawn through a matrix of filename vs. revision number". Say we have 5 files with the following revisions:

             file1   file2   file3   file4   file5
     
             1.1     1.1     1.1     1.1  /--1.1*      <-*-  TAG
             1.2*-   1.2     1.2    -1.2*-
             1.3  \- 1.3*-   1.3   / 1.3
             1.4          \  1.4  /  1.4
                           \-1.5*-   1.5
                             1.6
   

Note: For creating a release branch, other then a -b option added to the command, it's the same thing.

So, to create the v6.4 release I did the following:

$ cd pgsql
$ cvs tag -b REL6_4
   

Now, for those with CVS access, it's too simple. First, create two subdirectories, RELEASE and CURRENT, so that you don't mix up the two. Then do:

cd RELEASE
cvs checkout -P -r REL6_4 pgsql
cd ../CURRENT
cvs checkout -P pgsql
   

If you are only working on the CURRENT source tree, you just do everything as before we started tagging release branches.

After you've done the initial checkout on a branch

$ cvs checkout -r REL6_4
   

cvs commit