A.21 tag & rtag--Mark project snapshot for later retrieval.

• tag [-bBcdFflR] [-r tag] [-D date] new_tag [files…]
• Requires: working directory, repository.
• Changes: repository.
• Synonym: ta, freeze

and

• rtag [-abBdFflnR] [-r tag | -D date] new_tag module…
• Requires: repository.
• Changes: repository.
• Synonym: rt, rfreeze

Use tag to assign symbolic tags to the revisions of files checked out into your sandbox. The tags are applied immediately to the repository, with the revision numbers to attach the tag to supplied implicitly by the CVS records of your working files.

rtag works similarly, but does not need a sandbox to operate in, requiring an explicitly supplied tag or date instead (or assuming the tip of the trunk when one is not supplied explicitly). CVS uses this preexisting tag or date to determine which revisions of files in the repository to attach the new symbolic tag to.

The symbolic tags are meant to permanently record which revisions of which files were used for some purpose. The checkout and update commands allow you to extract an exact copy of a tagged release at any time in the future, regardless of whether files have been changed, added, or removed on the trunk or other branches since the release was tagged. For more, See section Branching and merging.

These commands may also be used to delete a symbolic tag, or to create a branch. See the options section below.

If you attempt to create a tag that already exists, CVS will complain and not overwrite that tag. Use the `-F' option to move the tag to a new set of revisions.

These standard options are supported by tag or rtag (see section Common command options, for a complete description of them):

-D date

Tag the most recent revision no later than date. This option is not valid when deleting tags (see `-d' option, below).

-l

Local; run only in current working directory. See section Recursive behavior.

-R

Update directories recursively (default). See section Recursive behavior.

-r tag[:date]

Tag the revisions specified by tag or, when date is specified and tag is a branch tag, the version from the branch tag as it existed on date. This option is not valid when deleting tags (see `-d' option, below).

Several tag specific options are also available. When an option is only available with one of tag or rtag, it is noted below:

-a

Clear new_tag from removed files that would not otherwise be tagged (rtag only).

-B

Allows -d or -F to delete or move branch tags.

WARNING: Recovering the information stored by branch tags is a very hard problem, more so than regular tags. Be absolutely sure you understand what you are doing before using this option.

-b

The -b option makes the new tag a branch tag (see section Branching and merging), allowing concurrent, isolated development. This is commonly used to create patches to a previously released software distribution.

-c

Abort if any tagged files are locally modified (tag only).

-d

Delete new_tag, instead of creating it.

WARNING: Be very certain of your ground before you delete a tag; doing this permanently discards some historical information, which could later turn out to be valuable.

-F

When a tag already exists, move it to the new revision. When the tag does not exist, create it as normal. This option is new in CVS 1.4. The pre-1.4 behavior is identical to `cvs tag -F'.

WARNING: Be very certain of your ground before you delete a tag; doing this permanently discards some historical information, which could later turn out to be valuable.

-f

With -r tag or -d date, force a head revision match if tag and date are not found (in other words, attach new_tag to the most recent trunk revision when tag and date do not resolve to an existing revision).

-n

Do not execute the tag program specified in the `modules' file (rtag only). See section The modules file, for more.

This document was generated on September, 14 2007 using texi2html 1.76.