2.9.6 Connecting with fork

This access method allows you to connect to a repository on your local disk via the remote protocol. In other words it does pretty much the same thing as :local:, but various quirks, bugs and the like are those of the remote CVS rather than the local CVS.

For day-to-day operations you might prefer either :local: or :fork:, depending on your preferences. Of course :fork: comes in particularly handy in testing or debugging cvs and the remote protocol. Specifically, we avoid all of the network-related setup/configuration, timeouts, and authentication inherent in the other remote access methods but still create a connection which uses the remote protocol.

To connect using the fork method, use ‘:fork:’ and the pathname to your local repository. For example:

cvs -d :fork:/usr/local/cvsroot checkout foo

As with :ext:, the server is called ‘cvs’ by default, or the value of the CVS_SERVER environment variable.