CVS Access

CVS is the tool you use to access the NetBeans sources here on netbeans, either from the command line, or even using the CVS support built into the IDE itself! Before you start you should know how the sources are organized, both in terms of directory structure, and also branches (most important for login access). You can browse the CVS archives online to get an overview of modules and projects. Read the Cederqvist manual included with most CVS clients for more general information.

Legal Notice

By downloading builds, source code, or accessing the CVS repository, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of the applicable licenses:

All the souce code made available on netbeans is provided to you under the terms and conditions of Common Development and Distribution License version 1.0 ("CDDL"). The text of the CDDL is available.

The software developed at netbeans may make use of third-party software components which are distributed under different licenses than the CDDL. Examples of such components may include Apache Ant, Apache Tomcat, JUnit, JavaHelp runtime, Java Compiler - a wrapper around the JDK java compiler.

All those components are either open source software or redistributable binary libraries. They are included in the builds, source code downloads and the CVS repository. Their licenses can be found in the

• For the IDE installation the license is in the top-level directory
• For the feature pack the license is in the top-level directory of the feature pack
• For a module source directory the license texts are in a subdirectory named "external"

It is your obligation to read and accept all such terms and conditions prior to the use of the builds and source code made available on the netbeans website or in the netbeans CVS repository.

Getting the Sources

These guides show you how to get anonymous CVS access to the NetBeans repository for different operating systems. If you cannot connect due to a firewall, please read how to use cvs from behind a firewall below.

• Using NetBeans (Recommended) — You can use the NetBeans IDE itself to get the sources. This method is the same for every operating system.

  NetBeans 5.0 CVS Support A step-by-step guide to getting the sources from cvs.netbeans, using the CVS support in the NetBeans IDE 5.0. NetBeans 4.1 CVS Support A step-by-step guide to getting the sources from cvs.netbeans, using the CVS support in the NetBeans IDE 4.1.

• From the command line — Most Linux machines have the command-line cvs client installed by default.
  • If you should not have a CVS client, first download and install one of the available clients.
  • Use the CVSROOT :pserver:/cvs for anonymous access with a blank password. If you have a named account, use your username in place of anoncvs; CVS will prompt you for your password.
  • This is how to check-out NetBeans sources from the command line using the Bourne shell (instructions valid as of NetBeans 6.0 only):

    $ CVSROOT=:pserver:/cvs
    $ export CVSROOT
    $ cvs login
    Enter password: For anonymous access, just hit Enter
    $ mkdir netbeans
    $ cd netbeans
    $ cvs -z6 co -P nbbuild
    Some output...
    $ ant -f nbbuild/build.xml checkout
    Lots of output...
                

    For pre-6.0 releases, check out the alias stable and do not run the Ant command.

• Using CVS on Windows — If you use Windows and you don't have a CVS client yet, we recommend you download and install this cvs client. Choose cvs-1-11-17.zip or better.

  This is how to configure CVS for checking out NetBeans sources:

  • Select from the menu: Start > Settings > Control Panel > System. Then select Advanced > Environment Variables. Make sure the path to the cvs executable is added to the %PATH% environment variable.
  • Set the environment variable %CVSROOT% to
      :pserver:/cvs
  • Note: Use the username anoncvs for anonymous access with a blank password. If you have a named account, use your username in place of anoncvs; CVS will prompt you for your password.
  • Open the commandline at Start > Run... and run cmd.exe. Type the following after the prompt:

    > cvs login
    Enter password: For anonymous access, just hit Enter
    > mkdir netbeans
    > cd netbeans
    > cvs -z6 co -P stable
    Lots of output...
                

  Recommendation: The list of temporarily non-recommended Windows cvs clients contains (but is not limited to): CVSNT, WinCVS, TortoiseCVS.

Note you may be prompted to accept license terms for any included third-party binaries when you build from sources. See the description of third-party extras on the source page for more info.

Non-anonymous Check-in Access

Using the anonymous login, you can check-out, edit and use the sources on your computer. To contribute your changes to the NetBeans repository, you'll need a free named account with check-in (write) privileges. The only difference from the anonymous access is that you enter your username and a non-blank password. If you think you should have a checkin account, please see Getting CVS Checkin Access.

Further Settings

How to CVS from behind a Firewall

CVS Flags

Flags are optional codes added to the cvs command to switch settings. For example, you need to use the -P option to prune empty directories when checking out or updating sources, and also the -d option when updating them to make sure that any new directories are checked out. You can create a CVS preferences file to make setting the necessary flags easier: Store your settings in a file named .cvsrc in your home directory on Unix; Windows users, consult the Cederqvist manual for details. This is an example of recommended default settings. Copy and paste the following lines in your .cvsrc file:

cvs -z3
update -d -P
checkout -P
diff -u
rdiff -u
tag -c

SSH tunnels

If you would like a secure connection to the CVS repository using an SSH tunnel.

Advanced

Maintaining Multiple Checkouts

If you use CVS on netbeans heavily, you probably have many or most modules checked out; you may have multiple branches checked out in different places; and so on. In fact you may have sources from other CVS repositories checked out too. Since the daily bread of sharing a repository with many other people is cvs update (or cvs update -d), you would quickly go crazy changing directory into each module in turn and updating in it alone.

So it is better to have all of your different checkouts in one big "active sources" tree, and update from the top of it every morning or whenever you like. Sometimes it is a good idea to check in changes to multiple modules simultaneously, too, especially if you are making interdependent changes (i.e. checking in half of them would break things).

There is a way to set up such a checkout tree with CVS. First, decide on some tree structure and check out whatever you like. For example, it could look like this:

src/               all active sources
nb_all/          everything on the netbeans trunk
openide/       trunk of openide pseudomodule
core/          etc.
html/
...
sandwich/        sandwich experimental branch
openide/       sandwich branch of openide
core/          sandwich branch of core
html/          trunk of html
...            trunks of selected other modules...
ant/             Jakarta Ant project
...              other repositories and branches...

Now find all of the "dummy" directories that do not correspond to an actual directory in any CVS repository, and specifically were not created by any CVS checkout command. In this example, there are src, nb_all, and sandwich. You should create the CVS metainformation directories for these manually. The repository path CVSROOT/Emptydir is magic and tells CVS you are making a dummy directory. So for example:

src/
CVS/
Root           one line: :pserver:/cvs
Repository     one line: CVSROOT/Emptydir
Entries        lines:    D/nb_all//// and D/sandwich//// and D/ant//// etc.
nb_all/
CVS/
Root         one line: :pserver:/cvs
Repository   one line: CVSROOT/Emptydir
Entries      lines:    D/xxx//// for each subdirectory xxx
sandwich/
CVS/
Root         one line: :pserver:/cvs
Repository   one line: CVSROOT/Emptydir
Entries      lines:    D/xxx//// for each subdirectory xxx
Tag          one line: Tsandwich
...

Now all CVS operations should work naturally within your master src directory.