CVS reported bugs

This page contains bug reports for CVS. It is similar in spirit to the BUGS file in the CVS distribution.

This page does not attempt all bugs which have been reported to bug-cvs, or to Cyclic. It is aimed at bugs which presumably remain in the development sources, rather than bugs which have been fixed. It also contains only those bug reports which seem interesting to Cyclic for one reason or another. Perhaps at some point someone will try to maintain a larger public bug-tracking system.

cvs in malloc(): warning: recursive call

CVS is erroneously calling functions like malloc, free, standard I/O, and so on from signal handlers. This can produce errors such as "cvs in malloc(): warning: recursive call". Here are a few details.

.cvsrc and unrecognized command names

If you include an incorrect command name in a .cvsrc file, CVS currently will silently ignore it. Here is a more detailed discussion.

Revision numbering/specification

Here is a report of a core dump which seems to be related to "cvs update -r 4".

And here is one regarding "cvs commit -r 0".

Timestamps

CVS will set the timestamp of a file which is being newly checked out to the time of the revision which is being checked out (test case "stamps" in sanity.sh). To cope with make, if one is updating an existing file, the timestamp is the time of the update. However, if one removes the file and then runs cvs update, CVS's behavior will be that of the former case, and it should be that of the latter case (based on whether the file is mentioned in CVS/Entries, or perhaps even something stranger like whether the directory existed previously).

Resolved reports

• 19 Jan 1999: Move the report concerning a confusing error message if one specifies the wrong directory for CVS's temporary files to the Set up page.
• 17 Jan 1999: Move the "cvs annotate and branches" and "Adding and removing files" items to the Branching page.
• Jan 1999: Moved the items about modules to the specifying files page.
• "CVSROOT/users file doesn't work very well" moved to Unofficial Patches page, 27 Apr 1998, because someone submitted a patch.
• The issues with cvs admin -b were resolved by Larry Jones checkin of 20 Feb 1998.