A CVS repository is a central place to store files and directories that are under revision control, as well as additional data such as a complete history of changes or information about who made those changes and when. A typical CVS repository stores multiple projects in separate subdirectories called modules. When publicly accessible, it allows several developers to create a working copy of any of the modules, make changes, and share these changes with others by committing them back to the repository.

To create a new, empty CVS repository in a directory of your choice, run the following command:

cvs -d path init

Note that path must be an absolute path to the directory in which you want to store the repository (for example, /var/cvs/). Alternatively, you can specify this path by changing the value of the $CVSROOT environment variable:

export CVSROOT=path

This allows you to omit the path from cvs init and other CVS-related commands:

cvs init

~]$ export CVSROOT=~/cvs
~]$ cvs init

To put an existing project under revision control, change to the directory in which the project is stored and run the following command:

cvs [-d cvs_repository] import [-m "commit message"] module vendor_tag release_tag

Note that cvs_repository is a path to the CVS repository, module is the subdirectory in which you want to import the project (such as project), and vendor_tag and release_tag are vendor and release tags.

~]$ ls myproject
AUTHORS  doc  INSTALL  LICENSE  Makefile  README  src  TODO

myproject]$ export CVSROOT=~/cvs
myproject]$ cvs import -m "Initial import." project mycompany init
N project/Makefile
N project/AUTHORS
N project/LICENSE
N project/TODO
N project/INSTALL
...