C.4.4.2 Keeping a checked out copy

It is often useful to maintain a directory tree which contains files which correspond to the latest version in the repository. For example, other developers might want to refer to the latest sources without having to check them out, or you might be maintaining a web site with CVS and want every checkin to cause the files used by the web server to be updated.

The way to do this is by having loginfo invoke cvs update. Doing so in the naive way will cause a problem with locks, so the cvs update must be run in the background. Here is an example for unix (this should all be on one line):

^cyclic-pages		(date; cat; (sleep 2; cd /u/www/local-docs;
 cvs -q update -d) &) >> $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/updatelog 2>&1

This will cause checkins to repository directories starting with cyclic-pages to update the checked out tree in ‘/u/www/local-docs’.