CVSup

CVSup is a tool for fetching files from CVS repositories. It can fetch complete files or multiple revisions from the same file (that is, it can mirror several repositories including version histories).

Development of CVSup

These are just a few random ideas about how CVSup might be modified from someone who probably won't have time to implement them:

• Understand the CVSROOT/val-tags file. This would fix the limitation "CVSup cannot distinguish between valid and invalid tags" described in the CVSup documentation.
• Rewrite it in a language which is more popular than Modula-3. C is going to be the most portable, but a variety of choices would be an improvement over Modula-3 (from the point of view of making it easy to install).
• Maybe unify the protocol with the CVS remote protocol. See some notes about missing features from the CVS protocol. There probably would also be performance issues to look into.

• You probably want to find a CVSup executable for your platform. Building from source is also a possibility but you need a Modula-3 compiler for that. See the CVSup pages mentioned below for download details.

• There is a nice CVSup page from John D. Polstra, the developer of CVSup.
• Most of the following projects have information on downloadable CVSup executables and CVSup usage, both in general and in their project.
  • FreeBSD operating system.
  • K Desktop Environment.
  • PostgreSQL database.
  • Washington University St. Louis (TAO real-time CORBA implementation and related projects).
• Our Multisite Information Page has a few notes on tools other than CVSup, which accomplish some of the same things.

• One appropriate mailing list is info-cvs which also covers CVS. To subscribe send mail to info-cvs-request@gnu.org
• One newsgroup for CVSup and other version control systems is comp.software.config-mgmt.
• Also see the FreeBSD mailing lists mentioned on the FreeBSD CVSup page.