Re: CVS command returns error

[René Berber <r dot berber at computer dot org>]

Michael Giroux wrote:

> The CVS related ANT tasks require that the cvs executable is on the PATH.

Which is Windows' environment variable PATH, not necessarily the same as the
shell variable PATH you see under Cygwin.

Most important is that ant, like any other java application, uses Windows paths
while applications compiled with Cygwin see and use a Unix-like path (which
doesn't necessarily work with java).

> I have two versions of cvs installed,
> one is at c:\bin\cvs\cvs.exe
> The other at c:\cygwin\bin\cvs.exe
> 
> Both versions show the same version information:
> Concurrent Versions System (CVS) 1.11.20 (client)

Neither of those is the Cygwin distributed "stable" version (which is at the
1.11.17 version) unless you installed the "experimental" tagged package.  But
that is not important, are those compiled under Cygwin?

> When I attempt to execute the target that contains <cvschangelog> using
> the cygwin copy of cvs, I get the following error:
> cvs server: cannot open directory /cvsroot/howl/howl/logger

Probably a path problem.

> When I execute using the version in my c:\bin\cvs directory, the task
> runs successfully.  So while these two versions of CVS appear to be the
> same version, they certainly do not work identically.
> 
> Is anyone aware of any issues with the cygwin version of cvs command?
> Any tricks to using it with <cvs*> ant tasks?

No tricks really, is only knowing cvs, Cygwin and ant.

- cvs client has the option of specifying which executable to run as server.
- Cygwin has the cygpath command, used to translate paths to/from Windows syntax.

If you are using an IDE for java, some of those include their own cvs (which
comes from cvsNT) and use non-standard parameters and do understand Windows
paths (but not Cygwin/Unix paths).

> I did not see that I could specify a nested search path in the <cvs>
> commands.  Is there a way to force ANT to use a specific executable for
> the <cvs*> tasks?

Yes.  As I said, that is a cvs client parameter.

> FWIW, I get similar results using "cvs status" from the command prompt
> (taking ANT out of the picture).  When using c:\bin\cvs\cvs.exe version
> the status is returned successfully.  When using c:\cygwin\bin\cvs.exe I
> get an error.  The error occurs whether I invoke cvs from a dos shell,
> or a cygwin shell.

Now you are confusing things.  The cvs status that worked was done in a working
repository build by the same cvs (it already has, inside all those CVS
directories, where the repository is located, what user did the checkout, and
whatever it needs to work).

Anyway, the owners of this list may object to discussions over non-Cygwin
related issues.  So, if you can limit your questions to the cvs distributed
package it would be better, ant has its own list, cvs in general has its own list.
-- 
René Berber


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