NERSC CVS information

• Using CVS to connect to a pserver
• Your .cvspass file
• Online information

CVS is an increasingly popular source code versioning system which allows managed contributions and edits to programming projects from many programmers. CVS can help you save space in your home directory by storing large software trees either locally or on a remote CVS server.

NERSC hosts a CVS server that is available to selected groups. It is most appropriate for groups that are developing and running codes on the NERSC IBM SP, Franklin. Contact the NERSC consultants (consult@nersc.gov) for more information.

Availability

The CVS utlities are available as part of the cvs module on Franklin. The following command will place the CVS binaries in your command path:

% module load cvs

Using CVS to connect to pservers

A CVS server may be configured in a number of different ways. If access is enabled through SSH (as is the NERSC CVS server), CVS will work as expected with no (unexpected) modifications to the user environment.

A popular CVS server configuration is known as a "pserver". A CVS pserver allows connections with a username/password pair (or perhaps no authentication) that is managed by CVS itself, rather than by the underlying host operating system. Both the username/password pair and the data are unencrypted during transmission.

You should be able to connect to pservers directly from Franklin. If you experience problems, please contact the NERSC consultants.

Your .cvspass file

If you do not have a .cvspass file you may need to create an empty one. cat /dev/null> ~/.cvspass

Online information

General information is available on how to use CVS.