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A.8.1 checkout options

These standard options are supported by checkout (see section A.5 Common command options, for a complete description of them):

-D date

Use the most recent revision no later than date. This option is sticky, and implies ‘-P’. See section 4.9 Sticky tags, for more information on sticky tags/dates.

-f

Only useful with the ‘-D date’ or ‘-r tag’ flags. If no matching revision is found, retrieve the most recent revision (instead of ignoring the file).

-k kflag

Process keywords according to kflag. See section 12 Keyword substitution. This option is sticky; future updates of this file in this working directory will use the same kflag. The status command can be viewed to see the sticky options. See section G Quick reference to CVS commands, for more information on the status command.

-l

Local; run only in current working directory.

-n

Do not run any checkout program (as specified with the ‘-o’ option in the modules file; see section B.1 The modules file).

-P

Prune empty directories. See section 7.5 Moving and renaming directories.

-p

Pipe files to the standard output.

-R

Checkout directories recursively. This option is on by default.

-r tag

Use revision tag. This option is sticky, and implies ‘-P’. See section 4.9 Sticky tags, for more information on sticky tags/dates.

In addition to those, you can use these special command options with checkout:

-A

Reset any sticky tags, dates, or ‘-k’ options. Does not reset sticky ‘-k’ options on modified files. See section 4.9 Sticky tags, for more information on sticky tags/dates.

-c

Copy the module file, sorted, to the standard output, instead of creating or modifying any files or directories in your working directory.

-d dir

Create a directory called dir for the working files, instead of using the module name. In general, using this flag is equivalent to using ‘mkdir dir; cd dir’ followed by the checkout command without the ‘-d’ flag. There is an important exception, however. It is very convenient when checking out a single item to have the output appear in a directory that doesn't contain empty intermediate directories. In this case only, CVS tries to "shorten" pathnames to avoid those empty directories. For example, given a module ‘foo’ that contains the file ‘bar.c’, the command ‘cvs co -d dir foo’ will create directory ‘dir’ and place ‘bar.c’ inside. Similarly, given a module ‘bar’ which has subdirectory ‘baz’ wherein there is a file ‘quux.c’, the command ‘cvs co -d dir bar/baz’ will create directory ‘dir’ and place ‘quux.c’ inside. Using the ‘-N’ flag will defeat this behavior. Given the same module definitions above, ‘cvs co -N -d dir foo’ will create directories ‘dir/foo’ and place ‘bar.c’ inside, while ‘cvs co -N -d dir bar/baz’ will create directories ‘dir/bar/baz’ and place ‘quux.c’ inside.

-j tag

With two ‘-j’ options, merge changes from the revision specified with the first ‘-j’ option to the revision specified with the second ‘j’ option, into the working directory. With one ‘-j’ option, merge changes from the ancestor revision to the revision specified with the ‘-j’ option, into the working directory. The ancestor revision is the common ancestor of the revision which the working directory is based on, and the revision specified in the ‘-j’ option. In addition, each ‘-j’ option can contain an optional date specification which, when used with branches, can limit the chosen revision to one within a specific date. An optional date is specified by adding a colon (:) to the tag: ‘-jSymbolic_Tag:Date_Specifier’. See section 5 Branching and merging.

-N

Only useful together with ‘-d dir’. With this option, CVS will not "shorten" module paths in your working directory when you check out a single module. See the ‘-d’ flag for examples and a discussion.

-s

Like ‘-c’, but include the status of all modules, and sort it by the status string. See section B.1 The modules file, for info about the ‘-s’ option that is used inside the modules file to set the module status.