cvslock(1)							   User Manuals 							cvslock(1)

NAME

       cvslock - lock CVS repositories

SYNOPSIS

       cvslock [-q] [-p pid] [-d CVS root] [-R|-W] [-u|-s|-c Command] [-l] directory

DESCRIPTION

       cvslock is used to lock a tree starting at directory in your CVS repository during low-level manipulation or inspection.

       There  are various modes of operation: You can use the -s or -c options to cause cvslock to spawn a sub-shell or a shell command from which
       you can safely access the source repository.

       You can also use cvslock to lock and unlock CVS repositories from shell scripts; in this case you'll want to use the -p option  to  specify
       the process ID which is written to the lock files' names.

       The default when given no options is to acquire a persistant read lock.

OPTIONS

       -q     This option tells cvslock to shut up and not print any diagnostic messages to stdout.  This is most useful when using the program in
	      conjunction with, e.g., rsync(1).

       -p pid The CVS lock files generated by this utility have the current process ID in their name to distinguish them from lock files generated
	      by  other tools such as cvs itself or concurrent sessions of cvslock.  Use this option to force cvslock to use a specific pid.  This
	      is in most useful from shell scripts.

       -d CVS root
	      This optional argument tells cvslock where your CVS repository's root is.  If no -d switch is given, cvslock will fall back  to  the
	      CVSROOT  environment variable.  Note that cvslock only works on local repositories, so don't try to access pserver or rsh-accessible
	      remote repositories this way.

       -R     This switch tells cvslock to acquire a lock for safe reading of the repository.

       -W     This switch tells cvslock to acquire a write lock on the repository.

       -s     When invoked with this option, cvslock will invoke the user's login shell as determined by  the  SHELL  environment  variable  after
	      locking the repository.  After the user has left that shell, cvslock will drop the locks.

       -c Command
	      This  option  is similar to the -s option, with the difference that cvslock will execute the shell command given on the command line
	      instead of giving the user an interactive shell.

       -u     When given this option, cvslock will try to drop a previously created lock  on  the  repository  in  question.   Using  this  option
	      together with the -s or -c options is an error.  The use of -p is highly recommended in conjunction with this option!

       -l     This  option  tells cvslock to lock only the directory specified.  Normally it locks the entire directory hierarchy under the speci-
	      fied directory.

DIAGNOSTICS

       cvslock spits out some diagnostics to the standard error stream.  It's exit value is zero if and only if the locking operation requested by
       the  user  could  be  performed successfully.  Note that no diagnostics about the exit value of commands executed through the -c switch are
       given.

BUGS

       The signal handling is not too well-tested and may be broken.

       If you try to create the same lock several times, you will get funny effects due to the error recovery cvslock tries to do.

SEE ALSO

       Version Management with CVS

       rsync(1), system(3), cvs(1)

AUTHOR

       cvslock was put together in a quick hacking session by Thomas Roessler <roessler@guug.de> and may be distributed under the terms of the GNU
       General Public License version 2.

Unix								   October 1998 							cvslock(1)