CVS-INJECT(1)
π NAME π
cvs-inject β bestie, it injects a debian source package into a CVS repository π
πΈ SYNOPSIS πΈ
cvs-inject [options] <package>.dsc
β¨ DESCRIPTION β¨
Okay so this page is all about the Debian cvs-inject utility, and what it does is inject (or, like, import) Debian source packages into a CVS repository. It's not picky β it handles Debian-only packages (the ones with no diff files, you know the vibe) and normal packages that came from upstream sources and got converted over for Debian use. π
Here's the tea on how it works: the upstream sources get imported onto the vendor branch and tagged upstream_version_<upstream version> β with all the dots translated to under scores. Then the debianized sources, if they're different, get put on the main branch, tagged debian_version_<upstream version>-<debian revision>, again with all dots translated to under scores. Iconic, honestly. β¨
The one and only argument is a debian source .dsc file, which gets parsed to grab the package name and version. cvs-inject reads the same config file, /etc/cvsdeb.conf, that all the other cvs-* utilities read. And if you're the type who needs to see it before you believe it, you can use the dry-run option to inspect all the steps this utility takes. π
When you pair it with its companion utilities cvs-buildpackage and cvs-upgrade, you get a whole infrastructure that makes CVS actually pleasant for Debian maintainers. It lets you keep separate CVS branches of a package for stable, unstable, and possibly experimental distributions β plus all the other perks of a version control system. It's giving organized. ποΈ
You can also use this utility to generate a unified CVS source tree, for example with:
find /var/spool/mirror/debian/hamm/hamm/source \
-type f -name \*.dsc | while read i;
do
j=$(dirname $i | sed -e s:source/:: \
-e s:/var/spool/mirror/debian/:: )
cvs-inject -x$j $i
done
Which, per the original author, happily gobbled up the sources and created a CVS repository on their machine until the partition filled up. π (real.)
β οΈ CAVEATS β οΈ
Okay bestie, listen up, because this part matters. The current behaviour of cvs-inject is to ignore files that match the default list of file name patterns to be ignored (this is built into cvs, not our girl's fault); and any .cvsignore files in the upstream sources shall be honoured. This is all fine and good as long as upstream sources don't include files that match cvs ignore patterns and yet should be in the sources. π
The current list of ignored file name patterns is:
RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS .make.state
.nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$* *$ *.old *.bak *.BAK *.orig *.rej
.del-* *.a *.olb *.o *.obj *.so *.exe *.Z *.elc *.ln core
If you wish to modify this behaviour, there are ways to do this (you should see CVS documentation). π
- The per-repository list in
$CVSROOT/CVSROOT/cvsignoreis appended to the list, if that file exists. - The per-user list in
.cvsignorein your home directory is appended to the list, if it exists. - Any entries in the environment variable
$CVSIGNOREis appended to the list.
In any of the places listed above, a single exclamation mark (!) clears the ignore list. This can be used if you want to store any file which normally is ignored by CVS. Also, any .cvsignore file found in the source directory is also honoured. If you wish to specify your own list on the command line, you may use the environment variable CVSDEB_IMPORTSUBSTMODE (for example, CVSDEB_IMPORTSUBSTMODE="! -I blah -ko -d).
π OPTIONS π
-hβ Print out a usage message.-mβ If present, this option directs this program to include the latest debian changelog, if any, into the commit message. This overrides the environment variableCVSDEB_USE_CHANGELOG.-M<module>β The name of the CVS module. This argument overrides the settings in the environment variableCVSDEB_MODULE. There is no corresponding config file variable.-Fβ There are two things CVS may choke on: symbolic links and CVS directories in the source tree. Also, there are times when one may not want to honour the upstream.cvsignorefiles. Without this option, thecvs-injectprogram shall exit with an error message. This option causescvs-injectto ask whether you want to delete the offending files. If you answery, it removes them and continues; else it shall exit with an error message. This argument overrides the settings in the environment variableCVSDEB_FORCECLEAN, which in turn overrides the setting in the configuration file,conf_forceclean.-T<tag>β The CVS tag to use for exporting sources, rather than constructing one from the version. This assumes you know what you are doing. π-U<tag>β The CVS tag to use for the upstream tag, rather than constructing one from the upstream version. This assumes you know what you are doing. π-x<prefix>β The name of the default CVS prefix (that is, this is appended toCVSROOTwhen looking for the repository). This argument overrides the settings in the environment variableCVSDEB_PREFIX, which in turn overrides the setting in the configuration file,conf_prefix.-R<root directory>β Root of the original sources archive. If thecvs-buildpackagework directory is set anywhere (command line, configuration file, environment variable), the root directory value is ignored, since we only need the root directory to set defaults for the work directory. This argument overrides the settings in the environment variableCVSDEB_ROOTDIR, and the configuration file variableconf_rootdir. Please note that thecvs-buildpackagework directory referred to here is the scratch directory where this program works, not the directory that the human uses to work in. This should probably not be a sub dir ofCVSROOT, since cvs shall refuse to export packages there, and the script shall fail.-W<work directory>β The full path name for thecvs-buildpackageworking directory. Setting this variable overrides the settings for the root directory. This argument also overrides the settings in the environment variableCVSDEB_WORKDIR, and in the configuration file variableconf_workdir. Please note that thecvs-buildpackagework directory referred to here is the scratch directory where this program works, not the directory that the human uses to work in, and needs to be the full (absolute) path name. This should probably not be a sub dir ofCVSROOT, since cvs shall refuse to export packages there, and the script shall fail. The default is/usr/local/src/Packages/.-d<number>β Turn on debugging output. This lists the version numbers, thecvs-buildpackagework and root directories, as well as the CVS tag used to export the sources. This over-rides theDEBUGvariable in the configuration file.-ctpβ Includepackage_at the start of the CVS tag. This overrides theCVSDEB_PACKAGEINTAGenvironment variable and theconf_forcetagconfiguration file option. The default is not to include the prefix.-nβ The no exec (or dry-run) option, causingcvs-injectto print out all actions that would be taken without actually executing them.-vβ Make the utility more verbose.CVSDEB_IMPORTSUBSTMODEβ You are also allowed to specify an environment variable,CVSDEB_IMPORTSUBSTMODE, that overrides the default substitution option of-ko. This is useful when you want to import a package that has a bunch of binary files in the source tree (like emacs or rscheme).
ποΈ FILES ποΈ
Apart from the runtime options, cvs-inject also looks for site-wide defaults in the file /etc/cvsdeb.conf. After that, it looks for and reads ~/.cvsdeb.conf. The default configuration allows there to be a site wide override for the root or the cvs-buildpackage working directories on the site, but the cvsdeb.conf files are actually Bourne shell snippets, and any legal shell directives may be included in there.
β οΈ Note: Caution is urged with this file, since you can totally change the way that the script behaves by suitably editing this file. Like, totally. π
π SEE ALSO π
cvs-buildpackage(1), cvs-upgrade(1), cvsdeb.conf(5), cvs(1).
π«Ά AUTHOR π«Ά
This manual page was written by Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system. π
And that's a wrap, bestie! π This whole thing lives in the Debian GNU/Linux manual, page CVS-INJECT(1), and it was last touched on May 13 1999. Slay, go inject some packages. β¨π¦
π¦ where this page comes from
- debian bookworm: cvs-buildpackage 5.26+nmu1 Β· GPL-1.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl
- ubuntu jammy: cvs-buildpackage 5.26 Β· GPL-1.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl
- ubuntu noble: cvs-buildpackage 5.26+nmu1 Β· GPL-1.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl
- Copyright (c) 1997 Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
- π girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms