GIT-CVSSERVER(1)						    Git Manual							  GIT-CVSSERVER(1)

NAME

       git-cvsserver - A CVS server emulator for git

SYNOPSIS

       SSH:

       export CVS_SERVER="git cvsserver"
       cvs -d :ext:user@server/path/repo.git co <HEAD_name>

       pserver (/etc/inetd.conf):

       cvspserver stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/bin/git-cvsserver git-cvsserver pserver

       Usage:

       git-cvsserver [options] [pserver|server] [<directory> ...]

OPTIONS

       All these options obviously only make sense if enforced by the server side. They have been implemented to resemble the git-daemon(1)
       options as closely as possible.

       --base-path <path>
	   Prepend path to requested CVSROOT

       --strict-paths
	   Don't allow recursing into subdirectories

       --export-all
	   Don't check for gitcvs.enabled in config. You also have to specify a list of allowed directories (see below) if you want to use this
	   option.

       -V, --version
	   Print version information and exit

       -h, -H, --help
	   Print usage information and exit

       <directory>
	   You can specify a list of allowed directories. If no directories are given, all are allowed. This is an additional restriction, gitcvs
	   access still needs to be enabled by the gitcvs.enabled config option unless --export-all was given, too.

DESCRIPTION

       This application is a CVS emulation layer for git.

       It is highly functional. However, not all methods are implemented, and for those methods that are implemented, not all switches are
       implemented.

       Testing has been done using both the CLI CVS client, and the Eclipse CVS plugin. Most functionality works fine with both of these clients.

LIMITATIONS

       CVS clients cannot tag, branch or perform GIT merges.

       git-cvsserver maps GIT branches to CVS modules. This is very different from what most CVS users would expect since in CVS modules usually
       represent one or more directories.

INSTALLATION

	1. If you are going to offer CVS access via pserver, add a line in /etc/inetd.conf like

		  cvspserver stream tcp nowait nobody git-cvsserver pserver

	   Note: Some inetd servers let you specify the name of the executable independently of the value of argv[0] (i.e. the name the program
	   assumes it was executed with). In this case the correct line in /etc/inetd.conf looks like

		  cvspserver stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/bin/git-cvsserver git-cvsserver pserver

	   Only anonymous access is provided by pserve by default. To commit you will have to create pserver accounts, simply add a gitcvs.authdb
	   setting in the config file of the repositories you want the cvsserver to allow writes to, for example:

		  [gitcvs]
		       authdb = /etc/cvsserver/passwd

	   The format of these files is username followed by the crypted password, for example:

		  myuser:$1Oyx5r9mdGZ2
		  myuser:$1$BA)@$vbnMJMDym7tA32AamXrm./

	   You can use the htpasswd facility that comes with Apache to make these files, but Apache's MD5 crypt method differs from the one used
	   by most C library's crypt() function, so don't use the -m option.

	   Alternatively you can produce the password with perl's crypt() operator:

		  perl -e 'my ($user, $pass) = @ARGV; printf "%s:%s
", $user, crypt($user, $pass)' $USER password

	   Then provide your password via the pserver method, for example:

		  cvs -d:pserver:someuser:somepassword <at> server/path/repo.git co <HEAD_name>

	   No special setup is needed for SSH access, other than having GIT tools in the PATH. If you have clients that do not accept the
	   CVS_SERVER environment variable, you can rename git-cvsserver to cvs.

	   Note: Newer CVS versions (>= 1.12.11) also support specifying CVS_SERVER directly in CVSROOT like

	       cvs -d ":ext;CVS_SERVER=git cvsserver:user@server/path/repo.git" co <HEAD_name>

	   This has the advantage that it will be saved in your CVS/Root files and you don't need to worry about always setting the correct
	   environment variable. SSH users restricted to git-shell don't need to override the default with CVS_SERVER (and shouldn't) as git-shell
	   understands cvs to mean git-cvsserver and pretends that the other end runs the real cvs better.

	2. For each repo that you want accessible from CVS you need to edit config in the repo and add the following section.

		  [gitcvs]
		       enabled=1
		       # optional for debugging
		       logfile=/path/to/logfile

	   Note: you need to ensure each user that is going to invoke git-cvsserver has write access to the log file and to the database (see
	   Database Backend. If you want to offer write access over SSH, the users of course also need write access to the git repository itself.

	   You also need to ensure that each repository is "bare" (without a git index file) for cvs commit to work. See gitcvs-migration(7).

	   All configuration variables can also be overridden for a specific method of access. Valid method names are "ext" (for SSH access) and
	   "pserver". The following example configuration would disable pserver access while still allowing access over SSH.

		  [gitcvs]
		       enabled=0

		  [gitcvs "ext"]
		       enabled=1

	3. If you didn't specify the CVSROOT/CVS_SERVER directly in the checkout command, automatically saving it in your CVS/Root files, then you
	   need to set them explicitly in your environment. CVSROOT should be set as per normal, but the directory should point at the appropriate
	   git repo. As above, for SSH clients not restricted to git-shell, CVS_SERVER should be set to git-cvsserver.

		    export CVSROOT=:ext:user@server:/var/git/project.git
		    export CVS_SERVER="git cvsserver"

	4. For SSH clients that will make commits, make sure their server-side .ssh/environment files (or .bashrc, etc., according to their
	   specific shell) export appropriate values for GIT_AUTHOR_NAME, GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL, GIT_COMMITTER_NAME, and GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL. For SSH
	   clients whose login shell is bash, .bashrc may be a reasonable alternative.

	5. Clients should now be able to check out the project. Use the CVS module name to indicate what GIT head you want to check out. This also
	   sets the name of your newly checked-out directory, unless you tell it otherwise with -d <dir_name>. For example, this checks out master
	   branch to the project-master directory:

		    cvs co -d project-master master

DATABASE BACKEND

       git-cvsserver uses one database per git head (i.e. CVS module) to store information about the repository to maintain consistent CVS
       revision numbers. The database needs to be updated (i.e. written to) after every commit.

       If the commit is done directly by using git (as opposed to using git-cvsserver) the update will need to happen on the next repository
       access by git-cvsserver, independent of access method and requested operation.

       That means that even if you offer only read access (e.g. by using the pserver method), git-cvsserver should have write access to the
       database to work reliably (otherwise you need to make sure that the database is up-to-date any time git-cvsserver is executed).

       By default it uses SQLite databases in the git directory, named gitcvs.<module_name>.sqlite. Note that the SQLite backend creates temporary
       files in the same directory as the database file on write so it might not be enough to grant the users using git-cvsserver write access to
       the database file without granting them write access to the directory, too.

       The database can not be reliably regenerated in a consistent form after the branch it is tracking has changed. Example: For merged
       branches, git-cvsserver only tracks one branch of development, and after a git merge an incrementally updated database may track a
       different branch than a database regenerated from scratch, causing inconsistent CVS revision numbers. git-cvsserver has no way of knowing
       which branch it would have picked if it had been run incrementally pre-merge. So if you have to fully or partially (from old backup)
       regenerate the database, you should be suspicious of pre-existing CVS sandboxes.

       You can configure the database backend with the following configuration variables:

   Configuring database backend
       git-cvsserver uses the Perl DBI module. Please also read its documentation if changing these variables, especially about DBI->connect().

       gitcvs.dbname
	   Database name. The exact meaning depends on the selected database driver, for SQLite this is a filename. Supports variable substitution
	   (see below). May not contain semicolons (;). Default: %Ggitcvs.%m.sqlite

       gitcvs.dbdriver
	   Used DBI driver. You can specify any available driver for this here, but it might not work. cvsserver is tested with DBD::SQLite,
	   reported to work with DBD::Pg, and reported not to work with DBD::mysql. Please regard this as an experimental feature. May not contain
	   colons (:). Default: SQLite

       gitcvs.dbuser
	   Database user. Only useful if setting dbdriver, since SQLite has no concept of database users. Supports variable substitution (see
	   below).

       gitcvs.dbpass
	   Database password. Only useful if setting dbdriver, since SQLite has no concept of database passwords.

       gitcvs.dbTableNamePrefix
	   Database table name prefix. Supports variable substitution (see below). Any non-alphabetic characters will be replaced with
	   underscores.

       All variables can also be set per access method, see above.

       Variable substitution
	   In dbdriver and dbuser you can use the following variables:

	   %G
	       git directory name

	   %g
	       git directory name, where all characters except for alpha-numeric ones, ., and - are replaced with _ (this should make it easier to
	       use the directory name in a filename if wanted)

	   %m
	       CVS module/git head name

	   %a
	       access method (one of "ext" or "pserver")

	   %u
	       Name of the user running git-cvsserver. If no name can be determined, the numeric uid is used.

ENVIRONMENT

       These variables obviate the need for command-line options in some circumstances, allowing easier restricted usage through git-shell.

       GIT_CVSSERVER_BASE_PATH takes the place of the argument to --base-path.

       GIT_CVSSERVER_ROOT specifies a single-directory whitelist. The repository must still be configured to allow access through git-cvsserver,
       as described above.

       When these environment variables are set, the corresponding command-line arguments may not be used.

ECLIPSE CVS CLIENT NOTES

       To get a checkout with the Eclipse CVS client:

	1. Select "Create a new project -> From CVS checkout"

	2. Create a new location. See the notes below for details on how to choose the right protocol.

	3. Browse the modules available. It will give you a list of the heads in the repository. You will not be able to browse the tree from
	   there. Only the heads.

	4. Pick HEAD when it asks what branch/tag to check out. Untick the "launch commit wizard" to avoid committing the .project file.

       Protocol notes: If you are using anonymous access via pserver, just select that. Those using SSH access should choose the ext protocol, and
       configure ext access on the Preferences->Team->CVS->ExtConnection pane. Set CVS_SERVER to "git cvsserver". Note that password support is
       not good when using ext, you will definitely want to have SSH keys setup.

       Alternatively, you can just use the non-standard extssh protocol that Eclipse offer. In that case CVS_SERVER is ignored, and you will have
       to replace the cvs utility on the server with git-cvsserver or manipulate your .bashrc so that calling cvs effectively calls git-cvsserver.

CLIENTS KNOWN TO WORK

       o   CVS 1.12.9 on Debian

       o   CVS 1.11.17 on MacOSX (from Fink package)

       o   Eclipse 3.0, 3.1.2 on MacOSX (see Eclipse CVS Client Notes)

       o   TortoiseCVS

OPERATIONS SUPPORTED

       All the operations required for normal use are supported, including checkout, diff, status, update, log, add, remove, commit. Legacy
       monitoring operations are not supported (edit, watch and related). Exports and tagging (tags and branches) are not supported at this stage.

   CRLF Line Ending Conversions
       By default the server leaves the -k mode blank for all files, which causes the CVS client to treat them as a text files, subject to
       end-of-line conversion on some platforms.

       You can make the server use the end-of-line conversion attributes to set the -k modes for files by setting the gitcvs.usecrlfattr config
       variable. See gitattributes(5) for more information about end-of-line conversion.

       Alternatively, if gitcvs.usecrlfattr config is not enabled or the attributes do not allow automatic detection for a filename, then the
       server uses the gitcvs.allbinary config for the default setting. If gitcvs.allbinary is set, then file not otherwise specified will default
       to -kb mode. Otherwise the -k mode is left blank. But if gitcvs.allbinary is set to "guess", then the correct -k mode will be guessed based
       on the contents of the file.

       For best consistency with cvs, it is probably best to override the defaults by setting gitcvs.usecrlfattr to true, and gitcvs.allbinary to
       "guess".

DEPENDENCIES

       git-cvsserver depends on DBD::SQLite.

GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite

Git 1.7.10.4							    11/24/2012							  GIT-CVSSERVER(1)