source code via cvs

source code via cvs

In addition to the other methods, the Mozilla source code is available via CVS.
What's CVS? CVS is the Concurrent Versions System. Start at Cyclic Software's pages to learn more.
Anyone can check out the sources via CVS, while only certain people have the ability to check in (those people, basically, are the module owners and their delegates. More details on this will be forthcoming.)
To check out the sources, you need to be running CVS 1.9 or later, and have your $CVSROOT set to
:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.mozilla.org:/cvsroot

The password for user anonymous is anonymous.

NOTE: We eventually plan to have a number of frequently-updated read-only mirrors of our CVS server. Today, there is just the one, and it's not a particularly powerful machine.
In order to make our current CVS server usable, we have instituted a limit of 8 simultaneous users; if that many people are connected, others will get a rejection message. This limit will be raised or eliminated when we get our beefy new servers online.
We're hoping to have the new machines online in the first week of June. The machines have arrived, but they aren't yet installed or configured, as the fates have been conspiring against us. Stay tuned...

What follows are more in-depth instructions on two topics:

First, detailed platform-specific instructions on how to check out the source repository from scratch.
Second, assuming you have previously downloaded the source code from our FTP server, how to convert your existing source directory into one that can be used with our CVS server (meaning you will only need to download the files that have changed since the FTP archive was constructed, rather than downloading the whole thing again.)

cvs checkout

Here is how you do a cvs checkout from our server on various platforms.
Note that following these instructions will cause only the platform specified to be updated. To get the entire source tree all 1.5 million lines; all 149 megabytes of source code, replace MozillaSourceUnix with mozilla in the instructions.
Also note that CVS is slower than FTP.
So, please read this entire document, including the conversion section, before doing anything rash.

Unix:
You can find CVS 1.9 at cyclic.com's Unix pages. You check out as follows. (Syntax is for csh; if you use sh, I'm sure you'll know what to do. If you don't, you've got bigger problems...)

% setenv CVSROOT :pserver:anonymous@cvs1.mozilla.org:/cvsroot    
% cvs login
(Logging in to anonymous@cvs1.mozilla.org)
CVS password: anonymous

% cvs -z3 checkout MozillaSourceUnix
cvs server: Updating mozilla
U mozilla/CHANGES.html
U mozilla/LEGAL
U mozilla/LICENSE
U mozilla/Makefile
...

You only ever need to run cvs login once. It will remember anonymous's password in your $HOME/.cvspass file.

The -z3 parameter is to cause the files (and diffs) to be compressed while in transit. This is almost always the right thing to do; so much so that you should probably just put cvs -z3 in your $HOME/.cvsrc file, to make it be the default on all CVS commands.

(Note that -z9 offers a logarithmic improvement in compression at an exponential cost in CPU time. Therefore, we recommend -z3; that seems to be about optimal in most cases.)

Windows:
Note: In order to use cvs under windows, you must have unpacked the source from the 'tar' file, not a 'zip'. The zip file format does not store dates with enough accuracy for cvs so updating source unpacked from a zip with cvs takes a really long time because the cvs client must send most files to the server to determine if they have changed.
You can find CVS 1.9 at cyclic.com's Windows pages. The checkout procedure is basically the same as for Unix:

C:\> set CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.mozilla.org:/cvsroot    
C:\> cvs login
(Logging in to anonymous@cvs1.mozilla.org)
CVS password: anonymous

C:\> cvs -z3 checkout MozillaSourceWin
cvs server: Updating mozilla
U mozilla\CHANGES.html
U mozilla\LEGAL
U mozilla\LICENSE
U mozilla\Makefile
...

If the -z3 parameter doesn't work, that means you don't have cvs and/or gzip installed correctly. Your life will be much easier if you correct this, rather than omitting that parameter.

You also need to have the HOME environment variable set to a sensible directory, or Cvs will complain.

Note: some Windows users report that using the -z option causes the cvs process to never complete: it will finish the checkout, and then get stuck at the very end. We don't know why this happens; it would appear to be a bug in the Windows version of CVS. In any event, it seems to be non-fatal since it only gets stuck after everything has been successfully checked out.

Macintosh:
We know of two CVS options for Macintosh that work with our CVS server: those are ``MacCVS Pro'' and ``MacCVS.'' Despite the similar names, the two packages are unrelated.
MacCVS Pro is a GUI program, while MacCVS is a command-line program that works with MPW, and behaves more like the Unix and Windows CVS clients.
To use MacCVS Pro:

Download it from maccvs.org. Then get the pre-made session file; and follow the instructions in the enclosed file, ``How to check out.''
Note that MacCVS Pro does not support the -z3 parameter for compressed transfers, which means that your checkouts will be painfully, glacially, unconscionably slow.
To use MacCVS:
Download it from digapp.com. You need version 3.1a7 or later (earlier versions won't work.) Then do the following:
1. Install the MPW CVS tool:
  Copy cvs (a MPW tool) and cvs2.Lib into your MPW Tools folder;
2. Set some environment variables inside MPW:

set CVSROOT ':pserver:anonymous@cvs1.mozilla.org:/cvsroot'
set USER 'anonymous'
set CVS_GETPASS 'anonymous'
set MAC_DEFAULT_RESOURCE_ENCODING AppleSingle
export CVSROOT
export USER
export CVS_GETPASS
export MAC_DEFAULT_RESOURCE_ENCODING

Log in into CVS from inside MPW (you only need to do this once):
```
cvs login
```
Check out the tree:
```
cvs checkout mozilla
```

Note that, like MacCVS Pro, MacCVS does not support the -z3 parameter for compressed transfers, which means that your checkouts will be painfully, glacially, unconscionably slow.

Other Mac CVS tools:

There are a few different CVS options for MacOS listed on cyclic.com's Macintosh pages, but I don't currently know which, if any, of these work with the mozilla.org cvs server. The beatings will continue until answers are found. Thank you for your patience.

OS/2:
You can find CVS 1.9 at cyclic.com's OS/2 pages. The checkout instructions for OS/2 are identical to those for Windows, above.
There is one detail, however: currently, the most recent OS/2 code for Mozilla is not (yet) on the trunk of the CVS tree: it is on a branch. So, if you are doing OS/2 development, you probably want to check out that branch instead. You do that like so:
See the CVS documentation for more information on how branches work.

converting a tarball to a working cvs sandbox

Chances are, you've already downloaded the source code from our FTP server (or one of its many mirror sites). Even if you haven't, you might want to consider doing so: it's faster than checking out the whole tree over CVS. This section explains how to make your previously-downloaded source directory be usable with our CVS server.

Our source tarballs contain CVS info. If you have a tarball dated 1998-04-29 or later, it is already set up to talk to cvs1.mozilla.org. All you need to do is:

download a tarball;
unpack it;
set $CVSROOT;
and run cvs update in that directory.

This will cause the server to send the changes that have been made in the CVS repository since the time the tarball was created.

However, if you have already downloaded one of the older tarballs (there have been two: 1998-04-08 and 1998-03-31) then life is not quite that simple...

The problem is, the first two sets of tarballs were created before our CVS server was set up; and also, before we renamed the top-level ns directory to mozilla. So, in order to unpack one of those older tarballs and then do a cvs update, you will need to take the following steps.

Again, note that these steps are not necessary if you have downloaded a tarball dated 1998-04-29 or later. These steps are only necessary if you already have the 1998-04-08 or 1998-03-31 tarballs.

Rename the ns directory to mozilla;
Munge the contents of the Root and Repository files in the approximately 500 CVS directories to point to correct CVS server and root directory.
You can do that by running the mungezilla Perl script. If you are on Unix or Windows, run it like so:
where mozilla is the name of your mozilla directory (the one that used to be named ns.)
On MacOS, just launch it. It will prompt you for the location of the source.
Beware: make a backup first. This script has not been heavily tested; we think it works, but if it causes you to lose your work, that's your fault. Be careful.
If the mungezilla script doesn't work for you, then I guess that means you're out of luck, and you'll have to check out the whole tree from CVS; or, preferably, download a newer source drop than the 1998-04-08 tarball, and then update based on that.
Now you should be able to update from the CVS server:
That should pull in all the changes made since the tarball was constructed (including all of the Makefile changes that go along with the renaming of the ns directory to mozilla.)

Good luck!