RE: Exporting file versions

[Miller Dale Contractor HQ AFWA]

Jason Yeung writes:

> I'm trying to use the export command to export files of a given
> revision, but am unsuccessful. The command and options I ran is "cvs
> export -r 1.2 -d testing testing123" and the error I get is "tag `1.2'
> must be a symbolic tag". If I create tags to represent the revisions and
> run and "cvs export -r ver12 -d testing testing123"  (ver12 represents
> all files in revision 1.2), it'll export OK.
>  
> Because my project has a lot of files, creating tags for each version of
> a file would be very tedious. I was wondering if there's a way to export
> files without creating tags? If you need tags to export, what would be
> the easiest way to create the tags without going through every file and
> create tags individually?

The help (-H) on export can be confusing on the -r option where it says
"Export revision or tag."

cvs -H export
Usage: cvs export [-NRfln] [-r rev] [-D date] [-d dir] [-k kopt] module...
        -N      Don't shorten module paths if -d specified.
        -f      Force a head revision match if tag/date not found.
        -l      Local directory only, not recursive
        -R      Process directories recursively (default).
        -n      Do not run module program (if any).
        -r rev  Export revision or tag.
        -D date Export revisions as of date.
        -d dir  Export into dir instead of module name.
        -k kopt Use RCS kopt -k option on checkout.
(Specify the --help global option for a list of other help options)

Keep in mind that you can use "-r HEAD" which will export the head revision
of each file.  You might be able to use the -D option to export as of a
given date for what you need. 

Note that -D can take many formats, such as
  20021015
  2002-10-15
  now
  today
  yesterday
  "20021015 10:15:00"

Also note that if you enter a date without a time, it defaults to use
00:00:00 as the time.  So if you checked in a file today 2002-10-15 and used
-D 2002-10-15 it would not export your change from today because it would be
looking for the revision that was present at "2002-10-15 00:00:00"

Dale Miller
  
If CVS understands your format at all, it most likely will understand it in
the way you intended.  If it doesn't understand it will exit with an error
message.