cvs diff of new files over a read-only CVS repository access

• 24 July 2006
• gnome

Today I’ve found a problem trying to create a patch with cvs. I haven’t got write access to gnome repository. This way I have only read-only access to it. The problem is when I try to create a patch with new files involved.

If I run:

$ cvs diff -N

it ignores the new files. If I run:

$ cvs diff -N changedfile1 changedfile2 newfile1 newfile2

it says something like this for every new file:

cvs server: I know nothing about newfile1

An easy solution would be creating two patches:

• One patch using standard cvs diff
• A second patch for new files, using diff command against /dev/null.

But there’s another trick to get a standard patch from cvs. You have to edit the CVS/Entries file of the directory you want to add a file. For example, for a newfile1 in directory directory1, you would change the directory1/CVS/Entries file and add an entry like this one:

/newfile1/0/Initial newfile1//

Then I can do a standard cvs diff command like this one:

$ cvs diff -N

and this will include the new files in the patch. Of course you can use the -u/-U parameters to get unified format patches.

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