Frequently Asked Questions about Harbour : Helping develop Harbour : What is CVS and how do I use it?
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3.5. What is CVS and how do I use it?

Before proceeding you should probably have a good read of the introduction to CVS by Jim Blandy. Reading this document should save you a lot of confusion later on.

To use the CVS server you first need to get a copy of the CVS client software for your operating system:

Once you have got your CVS client installed you can gain anonymous access to the Harbour CVS server. Depending on platform, the first thing you need to do is set the CVSROOT environment variable to:

:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/harbour-project

In addition to the above some environments might require extra information. For example, the DOS, Windows and OS/2 CVS clients need to be given two extra environment variables, HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH. These two environment variables tell the CVS client where the source will live locally. For example, if your Harbour development directory is at S:\FREESOFT\HARBOUR you'd set:

SET HOMEDRIVE=S
SET HOMEPATH=\FREESOFT\HARBOUR\

Users of the Windows client have reported that the HOMEPATH environment variable must start with and finish with a directory separator. Users of the DOS client have reported that the HOMEDRIVE environment variable must end with a colon.

Ensure that your harbour directory is created and change into it. Then run:

cvs login

and press enter when prompted for a password. Now run:

cvs extract -P harbour

to get a copy of the Harbour CVS repository (users of the DOS client have reported that it doesn't have the extract command and that the checkout command should be used instead, I'm also told that the cvs client on GNU/Linux requires that you use checkout).

Note: The CVS commands and directories are case sensitive: harbour must be in all lower case (also note that on SourceForge Harbour is known as "harbour-project").

Later, when you want to get changes from the CVS, you can do one of two things:

If you have problems after reading the above please consider reading the CVS introduction and also the documentation for the CVS client you've installed. If, after reading both those documents, you are still having problems you should drop a polite message into the developer's mailing list detailing your platform, environment, all the steps you performed and the exact nature of the problem.


Frequently Asked Questions about Harbour : Helping develop Harbour : What is CVS and how do I use it?
Previous: Where can I find the source?
Next: How do I build Harbour?