Converting to CVS

This page is about converting to CVS from another version control system.

The first decision to make is whether to try to preserve the version history from one system to the next. In many ways the simplest thing is to just keep the old history in the old system and put the new history in the new system. However, if you think it is worth it to move the history, it isn't necessarily all that hard.

If you are converting from RCS, or some other system which can export RCS files, just move the RCS files into the CVS repository (there is a section in the Cederqvist which explains this in slightly more detail in case that doesn't make any sense to you).

The other usual approach is to write a script which invokes both CVS and the other system using the usual scripting interfaces (command line or whatever), and checks each revision out of the old system and into the new system. This way you do not have to delve into the revision storage format of each system.

Here are a few such scripts. The disclaimers are that these scripts may not get everything right, they may not work with newer versions of the tools in question, and so on.

• SCCS - see the description of sccs2rcs at the bottom of our SCCS page.
• PVCS