Repository Structure

The new repository still has no projects in it. Let's re-run the initial import from An Overview of CVS, watching what happens to the repository. (For simplicity's sake, all commands will assume that the CVSROOT environment variable has been set to /usr/local/newrepos, so there's no need to specify the repository with -d on imports and checkouts.)

     floss$ ls /usr/local/newrepos
     CVSROOT/
     floss$ pwd
     /home/jrandom/src/
     floss$ ls
     myproj/
     floss$ cd myproj
     floss$ cvs import -m "initial import into CVS" myproj jrandom start
     N myproj/README.txt
     N myproj/hello.c
     cvs import: Importing /usr/local/newrepos/myproj/a-subdir
     N myproj/a-subdir/whatever.c
     cvs import: Importing /usr/local/newrepos/myproj/a-subdir/subsubdir
     N myproj/a-subdir/subsubdir/fish.c
     cvs import: Importing /usr/local/newrepos/myproj/b-subdir
     N myproj/b-subdir/random.c
     
     No conflicts created by this import
     
     floss$ ls /usr/local/newrepos
     CVSROOT/  myproj/
     floss$ cd /usr/local/newrepos/myproj
     floss$ ls
     README.txt,v  a-subdir/     b-subdir/	  hello.c,v
     floss$ cd a-subdir
     floss$ ls
     subsubdir/    whatever.c,v
     floss$ cd ..
     
     floss$

Before the import, the repository contained only its administrative area, CVSROOT. After the import, a new directory – myproj – appeared. The files and subdirectories inside that new directory look suspiciously like the project we imported, except that the files have the suffix ,v. These are RCS-format version control files (the ,v stands for "version"), and they are the backbone of the repository. Each RCS file stores the revision history of its corresponding file in the project, including all branches and tags.