Re: cvs init

["David H. Gutteridge" <david%gutteridge.ca@localhost>]

On Thu, 07 Feb 2019, at 13:46:00 -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
> > $ cd /tmp
> > $ mkdir foo
> > $ cvs -d /tmp/foo init
> > cvs [init aborted]: init to an existing repository is restricted to
> members of the group cvsadmin
> > $ grep cvsadmin /etc/group 
> > $
> >
> > I thought that if the cvsadmin group didn't exist on the system,
> this
> > restriction would be completely ignored? (according to "cvs admin"
> command -
> > no mention of it being applicable at all to "cvs init")
> 
> I just did "cvs -d /tmp/foo init" without creating foo first, and it
> worked fine (netbsd-8).
> 
> The error is about running init on an *existing* repository.
> 
> I don't see that rerunning init on a repo that exists is something
> anybody really wants to do, and if they do why using rm first is a
> real problem.

The CVS documentation for version 1.12.13 states:

"cvs init is careful to never overwrite any existing files in the
repository, so no harm is done if you run cvs init on an already set-up
repository."
https://web.archive.org/web/20111020045251/http://ximbiot.com/cvs/manual/cvs-1.12.13/cvs_2.html#SEC2

> As for the man page omission, maybe see if the bug is in upstream and
> file a bug with them ;-) ?
> 
> We could change the code to just not allow init of an existing dir at
> all.

There is also a related NetBSD PR filed back in 2011:
http://gnats.netbsd.org/45182

Regards,

Dave