annotate

Synopsis: annotate [OPTIONS] [FILES]

• Alternate name – ann
• Requires – Working copy, repository
• Changes – Nothing

Shows information on who last modified each line of each file and when. Each line of output corresponds to one line of the file. From left to right, the line displays the revision number of the last modification of that line, a parenthetical expression containing the user and date of the modification, a colon, and the contents of the line in the file.

For example, if a file looks like this

     this is a test file
     it only has too lines
     I mean "two"

the annotations for that file could look like this

     1.1          (jrandom  22-Aug-99): this is a test file
     1.1          (jrandom  22-Aug-99): it only has too lines
     1.2          (jrandom  22-Aug-99): I mean "two"

from which you would know that the first two lines were in the initial revision, and the last line was added or modified (also by jrandom) in Revision 1.2.

Options:

• -D DATE – Shows the annotations as of the latest revision no later than DATE.
• -f – Forces use of the head revision if the specified tag or date is not found. You can use this in combination with -D or -r to ensure that there is some output from the annotate command, even if only to show Revision 1.1 of the file.
• -l – Local. Runs in the current working directory only. Does not descend into subdirectories.
• -R – Recursive. Descends into subdirectories (the default). The point of the -R option is to override any -l option set in a .cvsrc file.
• -r REV – Shows annotations as of revision REV (can be a revision number or a tag).