How to remove all references to files in CVS?

johnnysmithson · 10-04-2012, 08:43 PM

I was doing a CVS commit from a documentation program to my Linux CVS server over SSH when the connection timed out. Then the program wouldn't let me retry because the files already existed. Silly me, I went and deleted all those files in the module I was working with but that didn't work. I tried to cvs remove on that module directory but it was telling me it didn't know anything about it yet.

However when I try to commit I still get errors about the file already existing, even though I removed it manually from the filesystem. How can I remove any and all reference within CVS to these files?

Do I just delete the lines in the $CVSROOT/CVSROOT history and commitlog files?

tronayne · 10-06-2012, 09:27 AM

What I would try is move your checked-out directory to another name, call it dir.bak or something. Then try a checkout:

Code:

mv dir dir.bak
cvs co dir

That might work; you'll get what was committed and what wasn't and you can then try merging anything newer in dir.bak with the content of dir. You'd want to do that by looking in the CVS/History file in dir, perhaps comparing it with the same file in dir.bak. You could do that by doing cvs edit file in dir then copying the newer file from dir.bak once you've identified newer/older files (which will be a pain).

If you're feeling gutsy,

Code:

cd dir.bak
# get rid of the CVS directory, you don't want or need it
rm -rf CVS
# get back into dir
cd ../dir
# get every file editable
cvs edit *
# up one directory
cd ..
# copy every file from dir.bak to dir, keeping time stamps
cp -pr dir.bak dir

That'll copy the files to dir then you can

Code:

cd dir
cvs commit -m "this is after the screw up"

and there you go.

Hope this helps some.