Cannot set CVS directory

[ssubluesman]

I have tried setting the CVS directory many times and many ways, yet I can't seem to get it to work. I searched here and based off this topic (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1106099&highlight=cvs) tried different commands (I obviously changed directory locations) but nothing worked. I tried this tutorial (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/cvs-tutorial.xml) and I still can't get it to work. After each attempt I try 'cvs init' and end up with:


cvs init: No CVSROOT specified! Please use the `-d' option
cvs [init aborted]: or set the CVSROOT environment variable.

I have no doubt it's something simple, but I'm fairly new to Ubuntu and even newer to CVS (I've played around with it a bit in Netbeans). Please help.

[ssubluesman]

anyone?

[unutbu]

Are you planning on using CVS on your local machine and just trying to set it up, or are you trying to download source code from the internet?

[ssubluesman]

I would like to be able to do both.

[unutbu]

ssubluesman, I am more familiar with bazaar (bzr) than cvs, so be aware I'm not speaking from experience. I'm drawing my info from here:

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~guru/cvs.html

Since Ubuntu users (by default) use bash, not csh for the user's shell,
instead of editing .cshrc as suggested in the link above, you should edit ~/.bashrc.


gedit ~/.bashrc

Add this to the end of your .bashrc:


export CVSROOT=$HOME/.cvsroot

Save and exit the text editor, gedit. Close your terminal and open a new terminal window. Each time you open a terminal window, ~/.bashrc is read. Thus your change to ~/.bashrc should become effective. You can check that it worked by typing


echo $CVSROOT

in the terminal. You should see something like


/home/user/.cvsroot in response. If the echo command returns nothing, then something went wrong.

Make the .cvsroot and .cvsroot/CVSROOT directories:


mkdir -p ~/.cvsroot/CVSROOT

Now try


cvs init

[ssubluesman]

It won't work. At the top of my command shell I get:


bash: export: `/home/derek/.cvsroot': not a valid identifier


I've tried playing around with a bunch of different possible locations (although that is a valid location, I checked it in the shell). I tried going through the rest of the steps anyways and end up with the "NO CVSROOT specified..." bit that I posted earlier.

[unutbu]

Sorry, I got the syntax wrong. Try


export CVSROOT="$HOME/.cvsroot"

(Note the equals sign.)

[ssubluesman]

It works! Thank you very much.