CVS--Concurrent Versions System v1.12.12.1: History browsing

History browsing

Once you have used

CVS to store a version control history--what files have changed when, how, and by whom, there are a variety of mechanisms for looking through the history.

Log messages

Whenever you commit a file you specify a log message.

To look through the log messages which have been specified for every revision which has been committed, use the

cvs log command (see section [[CVS--Concurrent Versions System v1.12.12.1: Guide to CVS commands#SEC158|log--Print out log information for files]]).

The history database

You can use the history file (see section [[CVS--Concurrent Versions System v1.12.12.1: Reference manual for Administrative files#SEC204|The history file]]) to log various

CVS actions. To retrieve the information from the history file, use the cvs history command (see section [[CVS--Concurrent Versions System v1.12.12.1: Guide to CVS commands#SEC152|history--Show status of files and users]]).

Note: you can control what is logged to this file by using the

`LogHistory' keyword in the `CVSROOT/config' file (see section [[CVS--Concurrent Versions System v1.12.12.1: Reference manual for Administrative files#SEC206|The CVSROOT/config configuration file]]).

User-defined logging

You can customize

CVS to log various kinds of actions, in whatever manner you choose. These mechanisms operate by executing a script at various times. The script might append a message to a file listing the information and the programmer who created it, or send mail to a group of developers, or, perhaps, post a message to a particular newsgroup. To log commits, use the `loginfo' file (see section [[CVS--Concurrent Versions System v1.12.12.1: Reference manual for Administrative files#SEC192|Loginfo]]), and to log tagging operations, use the `taginfo' file (see section [[CVS--Concurrent Versions System v1.12.12.1: Reference manual for Administrative files#SEC196|Taginfo]]).

To log commits, checkouts, exports, and tags, respectively, you can also use the

`-i' , `-o' , `-e' , and `-t' options in the modules file. For a more flexible way of giving notifications to various users, which requires less in the way of keeping centralized scripts up to date, use the cvs watch add command (see section [[CVS--Concurrent Versions System v1.12.12.1: Multiple developers#SEC92|Telling CVS to notify you]]); this command is useful even if you are not using cvs watch on .

This document was generated by Derek Price on July, 20 2005 using texi2html 1.77.