1.1 CVS

When used with CVS, the program is invoked from the CVSROOT/loginfo file as follows¹:

ALL /usr/bin/vcsync --vcs-type=cvs --detach --sleep=2 -- %p %s

The --vcs-type option tells vcsync which VCS to use. You can omit it, as vcsync is able to determine the kind of VCS it has been called from (see VCS detection).

The --detach and --sleep options instruct it to detach from the controlling terminal right after start up and wait for two seconds before performing its job. These two options avoid dead-locking condition which occurs when cvs update is invoked from the loginfo file.

The two dashes mark end of options. This is a precaution for cases when expansion of %p begins with a dash.

These options can be stored in the configuration file (see Configuration), which will look like:

# Define the VCS type (optional).
vcs-type cvs;
# Detach from the controlling terminal.
detach yes;
# Wait for the check in process to terminate.
sleep 2;
# Destination directory is located in this directory.
destination-root /srv/home;

Given this configuration file, the line in CVSROOT/loginfo can be simplified to:

ALL /bin/vcsync -- %p %s

The CVS synchronization routine gets the name of the project (the project part discussed in see Overview) from the value of the environment variable CVSROOT, by selecting its trailing directory component. For example, given the configuration file above and the setting CVSROOT=/var/cvsroot/foo, vcsync will assume the destination directory to be /srv/home/foo.

ALL /usr/bin/vcsync --vcs-type=cvs --detach --sleep=2 -- %s