CVS commands need to know where to find the root directory of the CVS repository to consult. One can do this explicitly in the command, using the -d option:
cvs -d /usr/local/cvsroot co yoyodyne/tc
Or, one can define a default repository in the environment variable $CVSROOT:
export CVSROOT=/usr/local/cvsroot
cvs co yoyodyne/tc
Repositories are created with the cvs init command. For example, using the -d option to specify its location:
cvs -d /usr/local/cvsroot init
To create a project hierarchy from scratch, say under $CVSROOT/yoyodyne/dir, issue the following commands:
mkdir tmp
mkdir tmp/man
mkdir tmp/man/testing
cd tmp
cvs import -m"Created directory structure" yoyodyne/dir yoyo start
Thereafter, use cvs add to add new files and directories as they are created. “yoyo” is the vendor tag, and “start” is the release tag.
To verify and clean-up:
cd ..
cvs co yoyodyne/dir
diff -r tmp yoyodyne/dir
rm -r tmp
To create a repository from an existing directory tree (that does not have any CVS/ directories in it), use:
cd wdir
cvs import -m"Imported sources" yoyodyne/rdir yoyo start