1GIT-CVSSERVER(1) Git Manual GIT-CVSSERVER(1)
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6 git-cvsserver - A CVS server emulator for Git
7
9 SSH:
10 export CVS_SERVER="git cvsserver"
12 cvs -d :ext:user@server/path/repo.git co <HEAD_name>
13 pserver (/etc/inetd.conf):
15 cvspserver stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/bin/git-cvsserver git-cvsserver pserver
17 Usage:
19 git-cvsserver [<options>] [pserver|server] [<directory> ...]
21
23 This application is a CVS emulation layer for Git.
24 It is highly functional. However, not all methods are implemented, and
26 for those methods that are implemented, not all switches are
27 implemented.
28 Testing has been done using both the CLI CVS client, and the Eclipse
30 CVS plugin. Most functionality works fine with both of these clients.
31
33 All these options obviously only make sense if enforced by the server
34 side. They have been implemented to resemble the git-daemon(1) options
35 as closely as possible.
36 --base-path <path>
38 Prepend path to requested CVSROOT
39 --strict-paths
41 Don’t allow recursing into subdirectories
42 --export-all
44 Don’t check for gitcvs.enabled in config. You also have to specify
45 a list of allowed directories (see below) if you want to use this
46 option.
47 -V, --version
49 Print version information and exit
50 -h, -H, --help
52 Print usage information and exit
53 <directory>
55 You can specify a list of allowed directories. If no directories
56 are given, all are allowed. This is an additional restriction,
57 gitcvs access still needs to be enabled by the gitcvs.enabled
58 config option unless --export-all was given, too.
59
61 CVS clients cannot tag, branch or perform Git merges.
62 git-cvsserver maps Git branches to CVS modules. This is very different
64 from what most CVS users would expect since in CVS modules usually
65 represent one or more directories.
66
68 1. If you are going to offer CVS access via pserver, add a line in
69 /etc/inetd.conf like
70 cvspserver stream tcp nowait nobody git-cvsserver pserver
72 Note: Some inetd servers let you specify the name of the executable
74 independently of the value of argv[0] (i.e. the name the program
75 assumes it was executed with). In this case the correct line in
76 /etc/inetd.conf looks like
77 cvspserver stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/bin/git-cvsserver git-cvsserver pserver
79 Only anonymous access is provided by pserver by default. To commit
81 you will have to create pserver accounts, simply add a
82 gitcvs.authdb setting in the config file of the repositories you
83 want the cvsserver to allow writes to, for example:
84 [gitcvs]
86 authdb = /etc/cvsserver/passwd
87 The format of these files is username followed by the encrypted
89 password, for example:
90 myuser:sqkNi8zPf01HI
92 myuser:$1$9K7FzU28$VfF6EoPYCJEYcVQwATgOP/
93 myuser:$5$.NqmNH1vwfzGpV8B$znZIcumu1tNLATgV2l6e1/mY8RzhUDHMOaVOeL1cxV3
94 You can use the htpasswd facility that comes with Apache to make
96 these files, but only with the -d option (or -B if your system
97 suports it).
98 Preferably use the system specific utility that manages password
100 hash creation in your platform (e.g. mkpasswd in Linux, encrypt in
101 OpenBSD or pwhash in NetBSD) and paste it in the right location.
102 Then provide your password via the pserver method, for example:
104 cvs -d:pserver:someuser:somepassword@server:/path/repo.git co <HEAD_name>
106 No special setup is needed for SSH access, other than having Git
108 tools in the PATH. If you have clients that do not accept the
109 CVS_SERVER environment variable, you can rename git-cvsserver to
110 cvs.
111 Note: Newer CVS versions (>= 1.12.11) also support specifying
113 CVS_SERVER directly in CVSROOT like
114 cvs -d ":ext;CVS_SERVER=git cvsserver:user@server/path/repo.git" co <HEAD_name>
116 This has the advantage that it will be saved in your CVS/Root files
118 and you don’t need to worry about always setting the correct
119 environment variable. SSH users restricted to git-shell don’t need
120 to override the default with CVS_SERVER (and shouldn’t) as
121 git-shell understands cvs to mean git-cvsserver and pretends that
122 the other end runs the real cvs better.
123 2. For each repo that you want accessible from CVS you need to edit
125 config in the repo and add the following section.
126 [gitcvs]
128 enabled=1
129 # optional for debugging
130 logFile=/path/to/logfile
131 Note: you need to ensure each user that is going to invoke
133 git-cvsserver has write access to the log file and to the database
134 (see Database Backend. If you want to offer write access over SSH,
135 the users of course also need write access to the Git repository
136 itself.
137 You also need to ensure that each repository is "bare" (without a
139 Git index file) for cvs commit to work. See gitcvs-migration(7).
140 All configuration variables can also be overridden for a specific
142 method of access. Valid method names are "ext" (for SSH access) and
143 "pserver". The following example configuration would disable
144 pserver access while still allowing access over SSH.
145 [gitcvs]
147 enabled=0
148 [gitcvs "ext"]
150 enabled=1
151 3. If you didn’t specify the CVSROOT/CVS_SERVER directly in the
153 checkout command, automatically saving it in your CVS/Root files,
154 then you need to set them explicitly in your environment. CVSROOT
155 should be set as per normal, but the directory should point at the
156 appropriate Git repo. As above, for SSH clients not restricted to
157 git-shell, CVS_SERVER should be set to git-cvsserver.
158 export CVSROOT=:ext:user@server:/var/git/project.git
160 export CVS_SERVER="git cvsserver"
161 4. For SSH clients that will make commits, make sure their server-side
163 .ssh/environment files (or .bashrc, etc., according to their
164 specific shell) export appropriate values for GIT_AUTHOR_NAME,
165 GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL, GIT_COMMITTER_NAME, and GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL. For
166 SSH clients whose login shell is bash, .bashrc may be a reasonable
167 alternative.
168 5. Clients should now be able to check out the project. Use the CVS
170 module name to indicate what Git head you want to check out. This
171 also sets the name of your newly checked-out directory, unless you
172 tell it otherwise with -d <dir_name>. For example, this checks out
173 master branch to the project-master directory:
174 cvs co -d project-master master
176
178 git-cvsserver uses one database per Git head (i.e. CVS module) to store
179 information about the repository to maintain consistent CVS revision
180 numbers. The database needs to be updated (i.e. written to) after every
181 commit.
182 If the commit is done directly by using git (as opposed to using
184 git-cvsserver) the update will need to happen on the next repository
185 access by git-cvsserver, independent of access method and requested
186 operation.
187 That means that even if you offer only read access (e.g. by using the
189 pserver method), git-cvsserver should have write access to the database
190 to work reliably (otherwise you need to make sure that the database is
191 up to date any time git-cvsserver is executed).
192 By default it uses SQLite databases in the Git directory, named
194 gitcvs.<module_name>.sqlite. Note that the SQLite backend creates
195 temporary files in the same directory as the database file on write so
196 it might not be enough to grant the users using git-cvsserver write
197 access to the database file without granting them write access to the
198 directory, too.
199 The database cannot be reliably regenerated in a consistent form after
201 the branch it is tracking has changed. Example: For merged branches,
202 git-cvsserver only tracks one branch of development, and after a git
203 merge an incrementally updated database may track a different branch
204 than a database regenerated from scratch, causing inconsistent CVS
205 revision numbers. git-cvsserver has no way of knowing which branch it
206 would have picked if it had been run incrementally pre-merge. So if you
207 have to fully or partially (from old backup) regenerate the database,
208 you should be suspicious of pre-existing CVS sandboxes.
209 You can configure the database backend with the following configuration
211 variables:
212 Configuring database backend
214 git-cvsserver uses the Perl DBI module. Please also read its
215 documentation if changing these variables, especially about
216 DBI->connect().
217 gitcvs.dbName
219 Database name. The exact meaning depends on the selected database
220 driver, for SQLite this is a filename. Supports variable
221 substitution (see below). May not contain semicolons (;). Default:
222 %Ggitcvs.%m.sqlite
223 gitcvs.dbDriver
225 Used DBI driver. You can specify any available driver for this
226 here, but it might not work. cvsserver is tested with DBD::SQLite,
227 reported to work with DBD::Pg, and reported not to work with
228 DBD::mysql. Please regard this as an experimental feature. May not
229 contain colons (:). Default: SQLite
230 gitcvs.dbuser
232 Database user. Only useful if setting dbDriver, since SQLite has no
233 concept of database users. Supports variable substitution (see
234 below).
235 gitcvs.dbPass
237 Database password. Only useful if setting dbDriver, since SQLite
238 has no concept of database passwords.
239 gitcvs.dbTableNamePrefix
241 Database table name prefix. Supports variable substitution (see
242 below). Any non-alphabetic characters will be replaced with
243 underscores.
244 All variables can also be set per access method, see above.
246 Variable substitution
248 In dbDriver and dbUser you can use the following variables:
249 %G
251 Git directory name
252 %g
254 Git directory name, where all characters except for
255 alphanumeric ones, ., and - are replaced with _ (this should
256 make it easier to use the directory name in a filename if
257 wanted)
258 %m
260 CVS module/Git head name
261 %a
263 access method (one of "ext" or "pserver")
264 %u
266 Name of the user running git-cvsserver. If no name can be
267 determined, the numeric uid is used.
268
270 These variables obviate the need for command-line options in some
271 circumstances, allowing easier restricted usage through git-shell.
272 GIT_CVSSERVER_BASE_PATH takes the place of the argument to --base-path.
274 GIT_CVSSERVER_ROOT specifies a single-directory whitelist. The
276 repository must still be configured to allow access through
277 git-cvsserver, as described above.
278 When these environment variables are set, the corresponding
280 command-line arguments may not be used.
281
283 To get a checkout with the Eclipse CVS client:
284 1. Select "Create a new project → From CVS checkout"
286 2. Create a new location. See the notes below for details on how to
288 choose the right protocol.
289 3. Browse the modules available. It will give you a list of the heads
291 in the repository. You will not be able to browse the tree from
292 there. Only the heads.
293 4. Pick HEAD when it asks what branch/tag to check out. Untick the
295 "launch commit wizard" to avoid committing the .project file.
296 Protocol notes: If you are using anonymous access via pserver, just
298 select that. Those using SSH access should choose the ext protocol, and
299 configure ext access on the Preferences→Team→CVS→ExtConnection pane.
300 Set CVS_SERVER to "git cvsserver". Note that password support is not
301 good when using ext, you will definitely want to have SSH keys setup.
302 Alternatively, you can just use the non-standard extssh protocol that
304 Eclipse offer. In that case CVS_SERVER is ignored, and you will have to
305 replace the cvs utility on the server with git-cvsserver or manipulate
306 your .bashrc so that calling cvs effectively calls git-cvsserver.
307
309 • CVS 1.12.9 on Debian
310 • CVS 1.11.17 on MacOSX (from Fink package)
312 • Eclipse 3.0, 3.1.2 on MacOSX (see Eclipse CVS Client Notes)
314 • TortoiseCVS
316
318 All the operations required for normal use are supported, including
319 checkout, diff, status, update, log, add, remove, commit.
320 Most CVS command arguments that read CVS tags or revision numbers
322 (typically -r) work, and also support any git refspec (tag, branch,
323 commit ID, etc). However, CVS revision numbers for non-default branches
324 are not well emulated, and cvs log does not show tags or branches at
325 all. (Non-main-branch CVS revision numbers superficially resemble CVS
326 revision numbers, but they actually encode a git commit ID directly,
327 rather than represent the number of revisions since the branch point.)
328 Note that there are two ways to checkout a particular branch. As
330 described elsewhere on this page, the "module" parameter of cvs
331 checkout is interpreted as a branch name, and it becomes the main
332 branch. It remains the main branch for a given sandbox even if you
333 temporarily make another branch sticky with cvs update -r.
334 Alternatively, the -r argument can indicate some other branch to
335 actually checkout, even though the module is still the "main" branch.
336 Tradeoffs (as currently implemented): Each new "module" creates a new
337 database on disk with a history for the given module, and after the
338 database is created, operations against that main branch are fast. Or
339 alternatively, -r doesn’t take any extra disk space, but may be
340 significantly slower for many operations, like cvs update.
341 If you want to refer to a git refspec that has characters that are not
343 allowed by CVS, you have two options. First, it may just work to supply
344 the git refspec directly to the appropriate CVS -r argument; some CVS
345 clients don’t seem to do much sanity checking of the argument. Second,
346 if that fails, you can use a special character escape mechanism that
347 only uses characters that are valid in CVS tags. A sequence of 4 or 5
348 characters of the form (underscore ("_"), dash ("-"), one or two
349 characters, and dash ("-")) can encode various characters based on the
350 one or two letters: "s" for slash ("/"), "p" for period ("."), "u" for
351 underscore ("_"), or two hexadecimal digits for any byte value at all
352 (typically an ASCII number, or perhaps a part of a UTF-8 encoded
353 character).
354 Legacy monitoring operations are not supported (edit, watch and
356 related). Exports and tagging (tags and branches) are not supported at
357 this stage.
358 CRLF Line Ending Conversions
360 By default the server leaves the -k mode blank for all files, which
361 causes the CVS client to treat them as a text files, subject to
362 end-of-line conversion on some platforms.
363 You can make the server use the end-of-line conversion attributes to
365 set the -k modes for files by setting the gitcvs.usecrlfattr config
366 variable. See gitattributes(5) for more information about end-of-line
367 conversion.
368 Alternatively, if gitcvs.usecrlfattr config is not enabled or the
370 attributes do not allow automatic detection for a filename, then the
371 server uses the gitcvs.allBinary config for the default setting. If
372 gitcvs.allBinary is set, then file not otherwise specified will default
373 to -kb mode. Otherwise the -k mode is left blank. But if
374 gitcvs.allBinary is set to "guess", then the correct -k mode will be
375 guessed based on the contents of the file.
376 For best consistency with cvs, it is probably best to override the
378 defaults by setting gitcvs.usecrlfattr to true, and gitcvs.allBinary to
379 "guess".
380
382 git-cvsserver depends on DBD::SQLite.
383
385 Part of the git(1) suite
386Git 2.33.1 2021-10-12 GIT-CVSSERVER(1)