CVS virtual file system / News: Recent posts

After a long time a new release was done.

This package uses the FUSE framework (http://sf.net/projects/fuse). It rescues me from writing kernel modules and let me concentrate on the communication between the local machine and the CVS server.

As result i have decided to discontinue the original cvsfs package and propagate new the cvsfs-fuse package.

As of version 0.3 this package should have nearly the same capabilities.... read more

This bugfix release fix an error in cvsmnt which prevents the 'executable'-flag of files being presented when the default file mask (used when none given) applies. Also the default directory mask is no more hardcoded in cvsmnt.
Refactoring the communication to the CVS server to ease the implementation/use of new commands - no new user level function usable yet. Internally big steps done to support check-in and update which hopefully ready to be released next.

The directory management between the kernel module and the daemon have been changed.

Allows now to be compiled with gcc 3.2 without any error and/or warning messages.
It allows to change attributes (chmod) for files and directories.

This release fixes an error when updating existing files - they were truncated to 0.
You are now allowed to move a file (rename system call). Remark: bash does not use this call, but Midnight Commander do.

Fix a misbehaviour when a previously checked-out file was removed (i.e. 'rm <file>).
Also some debugging messages which were posted in 1.1.4 are removed.

The ability to checkout files have been added. Also some bug fixes were applied.

This version enables a ioctl interface. Actually only the retrieval of the file version is supported. The utility 'cvsctl' is introduced to support this. Also some bugs have been fixed.

The release 1.1.2 has firstly got write capabilities. It allows to create/remove files and directories. This is actually limited to new files/directories. They will not be inserted into the cvs repository.
But it should be enough to start a process (for example 'make') which do not try to change existing files.

This fixes an error which causes an endless loop in the daemon.

After a long time a new release is there.

I did a huge rewrite of the kernel driver and utilities. All network code is moved out to a user space daemon. This allows in future to add other CVS access modes than pserver to be implemented.

The main feature (in users view) is that the viewed files are now cached on the local filesystem (in /var/cache/cvsfs).

The versioned file notation (e.g. filename@@1.2) should work now properly.... read more

If you have more than 2 file systems mounted using cvsfs then you will encounter a NULL pointer exception when doing the second unmount. This have been fixed.
Beginnings of /dev and devfs support have been implemented (untested, no read/write).

On RedHat installations (reported on 7.0 and 7.2) the compile of the kernel module (cvsfs.o) aborts with an undefined name in 'asm/hw_irq.h'.
Thanks to Ihor Strutynskyj for his help.

Due to a packaging error the release 1.0.6 does not contain all files.
This release (1.0.7) should be complete.

This is a maintenance release.
The slow-down when loading cvs projects with larger directories and/or slower connections is (hopefully) addressed by a changed cache strategy.
It should be much faster in such cases now.
The TTL (time to live) of the directory list in the cache have been incresed to 4 minutes (from 30 seconds). After that it is re-read from cvs.

configure scripts were added (thanks to Johan Rydberg) to support a wider range of linux installations. It will also allow to define the installation locations yourself.
Bugfix: Works now with versioned kernel symbols.
Allow versioned file access a'la filename@@1.1
For example: diff file1@@1.1 file1@@1.2

Due to problems with Sourceforge the released file cvsfs-1.0.4.zip did not appear at the list of releases.
Now its back.

Happy downloading ...

Release 1.0.4:
The commands 'cvsmount' and 'cvsumount' are counterparts for 'mount' and 'umount'. They now allow non-root users to mount cvs projects.
The setting of file/directory attributes in mount (or cvsmount) is now enabled.

Due to problems at sourceforge the release may not be available. Either await further notice or use the cvs contents in meanwhile.

The procfs routines went into an endless loop if data is written to the files 'control' and 'view'.
New mount options allow to change the presentation of the files/directories (user id, group id, file attributes, directory attributes). Changing the attributes (read/write/execute) is allowed, but don't have any effect, because it is not fully implemented.
It's all in package cvsfs-1.0.3.

The release 1.0.2 has preliminary support of procfs (/proc file system). Also the flooding of syslog with debug messages have been stopped. A little bug in file time calculation has been fixed.

Version 1.0.1 released.
The 1.0 version had a bug which results that the files listed are always dated from November.
I did also some code cleanups and documentation updates.

cvsfs is an attempt to create a virtual file system for cvs. The goal is to allow an user to mount a cvs project like a local disk.
The first package have now been released. It allows to mount a project (for example a sourceforge project) and navigate through it wilh any file manager (midnight commander, Konqueror, etc.).
Files can be opened and viewed.
Doing a directory listing does not download the entire file contents (save time). This is a big advantage when looking at large projects like XFree86.

Today i have set up the cvs repository with the first revision in the cvsfs files.
The usage is very limited but functional.
You can do
mount -t cvsfs -o cvsroot=/cvsroot/cvsfs //cvs.cvsfs.sourceforge.net/cvsfs <mount-point>

and you get the cvs contents of the cvsfs project at sourceforge.