Table of Contents
ci - check in RCS revisions
ci [options] file ...
ci
stores new revisions into files. Each pathname matching an suffix is taken
to be an file. All others are assumed to be working files containing new
revisions. ci deposits the contents of each working file into the corresponding
file. If only a working file is given, ci tries to find the corresponding
file in an subdirectory and then in the working file's directory. For more
details, see "FILE NAMING"
below.
For ci to work, the caller's login must
be on the access list, except if the access list is empty or the caller
is the superuser or the owner of the file. To append a new revision to an
existing branch, the tip revision on that branch must be locked by the
caller. Otherwise, only a new branch can be created. This restriction is
not enforced for the owner of the file if non-strict locking is used (see
rcs(1)
). A lock held by someone else can be broken with the rcs command.
Unless the -f option is given, ci checks whether the revision to be deposited
differs from the preceding one. If not, instead of creating a new revision
ci reverts to the preceding one. To revert, ordinary ci removes the working
file and any lock; ci -l keeps and ci -u removes any lock, and then they both
generate a new working file much as if co -l or co -u had been applied to the
preceding revision. When reverting, any -n and -s options apply to the preceding
revision.
For each revision deposited, ci prompts for a log message. The
log message should summarize the change and must be terminated by end-of-file
or by a line containing . by itself. If several files are checked in ci asks
whether to reuse the previous log message. If the standard input is not
a terminal, ci suppresses the prompt and uses the same log message for
all files. See also -m.
If the file does not exist, ci creates it and deposits
the contents of the working file as the initial revision (default number:
1.1). The access list is initialized to empty. Instead of the log message,
ci requests descriptive text (see -t below).
The number rev of the deposited
revision can be given by any of the options -f, -i, -I, -j, -k, -l, -M, -q, -r,
or -u. rev can be symbolic, numeric, or mixed. Symbolic names in rev must
already be defined; see the -n and -N options for assigning names during
checkin. If rev is $, ci determines the revision number from keyword values
in the working file.
If rev begins with a period, then the default branch
(normally the trunk) is prepended to it. If rev is a branch number followed
by a period, then the latest revision on that branch is used.
If rev is
a revision number, it must be higher than the latest one on the branch
to which rev belongs, or must start a new branch.
If rev is a branch rather
than a revision number, the new revision is appended to that branch. The
level number is obtained by incrementing the tip revision number of that
branch. If rev indicates a non-existing branch, that branch is created with
the initial revision numbered rev.1.
If rev is omitted, ci tries to derive the new revision number from the
caller's last lock. If the caller has locked the tip revision of a branch,
the new revision is appended to that branch. The new revision number is
obtained by incrementing the tip revision number. If the caller locked a
non-tip revision, a new branch is started at that revision by incrementing
the highest branch number at that revision. The default initial branch and
level numbers are 1.
If rev is omitted and the caller has no lock, but owns
the file and locking is not set to strict, then the revision is appended
to the default branch (normally the trunk; see the -b option of rcs(1)
).
Exception: On the trunk, revisions can be appended to the end, but not
inserted.
- -rrev
- Check in revision rev.
- -r
- The bare -r option (without
any revision) has an unusual meaning in ci. With other commands, a bare
-r option specifies the most recent revision on the default branch, but
with ci, a bare -r option reestablishes the default behavior of releasing
a lock and removing the working file, and is used to override any default
-l or -u options established by shell aliases or scripts.
- -l[rev]
- works like
-r, except it performs an additional co -l for the deposited revision. Thus,
the deposited revision is immediately checked out again and locked. This
is useful for saving a revision although one wants to continue editing
it after the checkin.
- -u[rev]
- works like -l, except that the deposited revision
is not locked. This lets one read the working file immediately after checkin.
The -l, bare -r, and -u options are mutually exclusive and silently override
each other. For example, ci -u -r is equivalent to ci -r because bare -r overrides
-u.
- -f[rev]
- forces a deposit; the new revision is deposited even it is not
different from the preceding one.
- -k[rev]
- searches the working file for keyword
values to determine its revision number, creation date, state, and author
(see co(1)
), and assigns these values to the deposited revision, rather
than computing them locally. It also generates a default login message noting
the login of the caller and the actual checkin date. This option is useful
for software distribution. A revision that is sent to several sites should
be checked in with the -k option at these sites to preserve the original
number, date, author, and state. The extracted keyword values and the default
log message can be overridden with the options -d, -m, -s, -w, and any option
that carries a revision number.
- -q[rev]
- quiet mode; diagnostic output is
not printed. A revision that is not different from the preceding one is
not deposited, unless -f is given.
- -i[rev]
- initial checkin; report an error
if the file already exists. This avoids race conditions in certain applications.
- -j[rev]
- just checkin and do not initialize; report an error if the file
does not already exist.
- -I[rev]
- interactive mode; the user is prompted and
questioned even if the standard input is not a terminal.
- -d[date]
- uses date
for the checkin date and time. The date is specified in free format as explained
in co(1)
. This is useful for lying about the checkin date, and for -k if
no date is available. If date is empty, the working file's time of last modification
is used.
- -M[rev]
- Set the modification time on any new working file to be
the date of the retrieved revision. For example, ci -d -M -u f does not alter f's
modification time, even if f's contents change due to keyword substitution.
Use this option with care; it can confuse make(1)
.
- -mmsg
- uses the string
msg as the log message for all revisions checked in. By convention, log
messages that start with # are comments and are ignored by programs like
GNU Emacs's vc package. Also, log messages that start with {clumpname} (followed
by white space) are meant to be clumped together if possible, even if they
are associated with different files; the {clumpname} label is used only
for clumping, and is not considered to be part of the log message itself.
- -nname
- assigns the symbolic name name to the number of the checked-in revision.
ci prints an error message if name is already assigned to another number.
- -Nname
- same as -n, except that it overrides a previous assignment of name.
- -sstate
- sets the state of the checked-in revision to the identifier state.
The default state is Exp.
- -tfile
- writes descriptive text from the contents
of the named file into the file, deleting the existing text. The file cannot
begin with -.
- -t-string
- Write descriptive text from the string into the file,
deleting the existing text.
The -t option, in both its forms, has effect
only during an initial checkin; it is silently ignored otherwise.
During
the initial checkin, if -t is not given, ci obtains the text from standard
input, terminated by end-of-file or by a line containing . by itself. The user
is prompted for the text if interaction is possible; see -I.
For backward
compatibility with older versions of , a bare -t option is ignored.
- -T
- Set
the file's modification time to the new revision's time if the former precedes
the latter and there is a new revision; preserve the file's modification
time otherwise. If you have locked a revision, ci usually updates the file's
modification time to the current time, because the lock is stored in the
file and removing the lock requires changing the file. This can create
an file newer than the working file in one of two ways: first, ci -M can
create a working file with a date before the current time; second, when
reverting to the previous revision the file can change while the working
file remains unchanged. These two cases can cause excessive recompilation
caused by a make(1)
dependency of the working file on the file. The -T option
inhibits this recompilation by lying about the file's date. Use this option
with care; it can suppress recompilation even when a checkin of one working
file should affect another working file associated with the same file.
For example, suppose the file's time is 01:00, the (changed) working file's
time is 02:00, some other copy of the working file has a time of 03:00,
and the current time is 04:00. Then ci -d -T sets the file's time to 02:00 instead
of the usual 04:00; this causes make(1)
to think (incorrectly) that the
other copy is newer than the file.
- -wlogin
- uses login for the author field
of the deposited revision. Useful for lying about the author, and for -k
if no author is available.
- -V
- Print 's version number.
- -Vn
- Emulate version
n. See co(1)
for details.
- -xsuffixes
- specifies the suffixes for files. A nonempty
suffix matches any pathname ending in the suffix. An empty suffix matches
any pathname of the form RCS/path or path1/RCS/path2. The -x option can specify
a list of suffixes separated by /. For example, -x,v/ specifies two suffixes:
,v and the empty suffix. If two or more suffixes are specified, they are
tried in order when looking for an file; the first one that works is used
for that file. If no file is found but an file can be created, the suffixes
are tried in order to determine the new file's name. The default for suffixes
is installation-dependent; normally it is ,v/ for hosts like Unix that permit
commas in filenames, and is empty (i.e. just the empty suffix) for other
hosts.
- -zzone
- specifies the date output format in keyword substitution, and
specifies the default time zone for date in the -ddate option. The zone should
be empty, a numeric offset, or the special string LT for local time. The
default is an empty zone, which uses the traditional format of without
any time zone indication and with slashes separating the parts of the date;
otherwise, times are output in 8601 format with time zone indication. For
example, if local time is January 11, 1990, 8pm Pacific Standard Time,
eight hours west of , then the time is output as follows:
option time output
-z 1990/01/12 04:00:00 (default)
-zLT 1990-01-11 20:00:00-08
-z+05:30 1990-01-12 09:30:00+05:30
The -z option does not affect dates stored in files, which are always .
Pairs of files and working files can be specified in three
ways (see also the example section).
1) Both the file and the working file
are given. The pathname is of the form path1/workfileX and the working
pathname is of the form path2/workfile where path1/ and path2/ are (possibly
different or empty) paths, workfile is a filename, and X is an suffix.
If X is empty, path1/ must start with RCS/ or must contain /RCS/.
2) Only
the file is given. Then the working file is created in the current directory
and its name is derived from the name of the file by removing path1/ and
the suffix X.
3) Only the working file is given. Then ci considers each
suffix X in turn, looking for an file of the form path2/RCS/workfileX
or (if the former is not found and X is nonempty) path2/workfileX.
If the
file is specified without a path in 1) and 2), ci looks for the file
first in the directory ./RCS and then in the current directory.
ci reports
an error if an attempt to open an file fails for an unusual reason, even
if the file's pathname is just one of several possibilities. For example,
to suppress use of commands in a directory d, create a regular file named
d/RCS so that casual attempts to use commands in d fail because d/RCS
is not a directory.
Suppose ,v is an suffix and the current directory
contains a subdirectory RCS with an file io.c,v. Then each of the following
commands check in a copy of io.c into RCS/io.c,v as the latest revision,
removing io.c.
ci io.c; ci RCS/io.c,v; ci io.c,v;
ci io.c RCS/io.c,v; ci io.c io.c,v;
ci RCS/io.c,v io.c; ci io.c,v io.c;
Suppose instead that the empty suffix is an suffix and the current directory
contains a subdirectory RCS with an file io.c. The each of the following
commands checks in a new revision.
ci io.c; ci RCS/io.c;
ci io.c RCS/io.c;
ci RCS/io.c io.c;
An file created by ci inherits the read and execute permissions
from the working file. If the file exists already, ci preserves its read
and execute permissions. ci always turns off all write permissions of files.
Temporary files are created in the directory containing the working
file, and also in the temporary directory (see TMPDIR
under ENVIRONMENT
).
A semaphore file or files are created in the directory containing the
file. With a nonempty suffix, the semaphore names begin with the first character
of the suffix; therefore, do not specify an suffix whose first character
could be that of a working filename. With an empty suffix, the semaphore
names end with _ so working filenames should not end in _.
ci never changes
an or working file. Normally, ci unlinks the file and creates a new one;
but instead of breaking a chain of one or more symbolic links to an file,
it unlinks the destination file instead. Therefore, ci breaks any hard or
symbolic links to any working file it changes; and hard links to files
are ineffective, but symbolic links to files are preserved.
The effective
user must be able to search and write the directory containing the file.
Normally, the real user must be able to read the and working files and
to search and write the directory containing the working file; however,
some older hosts cannot easily switch between real and effective users,
so on these hosts the effective user is used for all accesses. The effective
user is the same as the real user unless your copies of ci and co have
setuid privileges. As described in the next section, these privileges yield
extra security if the effective user owns all files and directories, and
if only the effective user can write directories.
Users can control access
to files by setting the permissions of the directory containing the files;
only users with write access to the directory can use commands to change
its files. For example, in hosts that allow a user to belong to several
groups, one can make a group's directories writable to that group only.
This approach suffices for informal projects, but it means that any group
member can arbitrarily change the group's files, and can even remove them
entirely. Hence more formal projects sometimes distinguish between an administrator,
who can change the files at will, and other project members, who can check
in new revisions but cannot otherwise change the files.
To prevent
anybody but their administrator from deleting revisions, a set of users
can employ setuid privileges as follows.
·- Check that the host supports setuid
use. Consult a trustworthy expert if there are any doubts. It is best if
the seteuid system call works as described in Posix 1003.1a Draft 5, because
can switch back and forth easily between real and effective users, even
if the real user is root. If not, the second best is if the setuid system
call supports saved setuid (the {_POSIX_SAVED_IDS
} behavior of Posix 1003.1-1990);
this fails only if the real or effective user is root. If detects any failure
in setuid, it quits immediately.
·- Choose a user A to serve as administrator
for the set of users. Only A can invoke the rcs command on the users' files.
A should not be root or any other user with special powers. Mutually suspicious
sets of users should use different administrators.
·- Choose a pathname B to
be a directory of files to be executed by the users.
·- Have A set up B to
contain copies of ci and co that are setuid to A by copying the commands
from their standard installation directory D as follows:
mkdir B
cp D/c[io] B
chmod go-w,u+s B/c[io]
·- Have each user prepend B to their path as follows:
PATH=B:$PATH; export PATH # ordinary shell
set path=(B $path) # C shell
·- Have A create each directory R with write access only to A as follows:
mkdir R
chmod go-w R
·- If you want to let only certain users read the files, put the users into
a group G, and have A further protect the directory as follows:
chgrp G R
chmod g-w,o-rwx R
·- Have A copy old files (if any) into R, to ensure that A owns them.
·- An
file's access list limits who can check in and lock revisions. The default
access list is empty, which grants checkin access to anyone who can read
the file. If you want limit checkin access, have A invoke rcs -a on the file;
see rcs(1)
. In particular, rcs -e -aA limits access to just A.
·- Have A initialize
any new files with rcs -i before initial checkin, adding the -a option if
you want to limit checkin access.
·- Give setuid privileges only to ci, co,
and rcsclean; do not give them to rcs or to any other command.
·- Do not use
other setuid commands to invoke commands; setuid is trickier than you
think!
- RCSINIT
- options prepended to the argument list, separated
by spaces. A backslash escapes spaces within an option. The RCSINIT
options
are prepended to the argument lists of most commands. Useful RCSINIT
options
include -q, -V, -x, and -z.
- TMPDIR
- Name of the temporary directory. If not set,
the environment variables TMP
and TEMP
are inspected instead and the first
value found is taken; if none of them are set, a host-dependent default
is used, typically /tmp.
For each revision, ci prints the file,
the working file, and the number of both the deposited and the preceding
revision. The exit status is zero if and only if all operations were successful.
Author: Walter F. Tichy.
Manual Page Revision: ; Release Date: .
Copyright © 1982, 1988, 1989 Walter F. Tichy.
Copyright © 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 Paul Eggert.
co(1)
,
emacs(1)
, ident(1)
, make(1)
, rcs(1)
, rcsclean(1)
, rcsdiff(1)
, rcsintro(1)
,
rcsmerge(1)
, rlog(1)
, setuid(2)
, rcsfile(5)
Walter F. Tichy, A System for Version Control, SoftwarePractice & Experience
15, 7 (July 1985), 637-654.
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