15.2 CVS Command Format

CVS commands are of the form:

cvs global_options command command_options

For example, here is a simple sequence of commands showing both kinds of options in the context of creating a repository, importing existing files, and performing a few common operations on them:

$ cvs -d /usr/local/cvsrep init
$ cd ~/work/hello
$ cvs -d /usr/local/cvsrep import -m 'Import' hello vendor start
$ cd ..
$ mv hello hello.bak
$ cvs -d /usr/local/cvsrep checkout hello
$ cd hello
$ vi hello.c
$ cvs commit -m 'Fixed a typo'
$ cvs tag hello-1_0
$ cvs remove -f Makefile
$ cvs commit -m 'Removed old Makefile'
$ cvs upd -r hello-1_0
$ cvs upd -A

Some global options are common to both user and administrator commands, and some are specific to each. The common global options are described in the next section, and the administrator and user options are described in Section 15.5 and Section 15.6, respectively.