Chapter 5. Revisions

Table of Contents

Revision numbers
Versions, revisions and releases
Assigning revisions
Tags-Symbolic revisions
Specifying what to tag from the working directory
Specifying what to tag by date or revision
Deleting, moving, and renaming tags
Tagging and adding and removing files
Alias tags
Commit identifiers
Sticky tags

For many uses of cvsnt, one doesn't need to worry too much about revision numbers; cvsnt assigns numbers such as 1.1, 1.2, and so on, and that is all one needs to know. However, some people prefer to have more knowledge and control concerning how cvsnt assigns revision numbers.

If one wants to keep track of a set of revisions involving more than one file, such as which revisions went into a particular release, one uses a tag, which is a symbolic revision which can be assigned to a numeric revision in each file.

Revision numbers

Each version of a file has a unique revision number. Revision numbers look like 1.1, 1.2, 1.3.2.2 or even 1.3.2.2.4.5. A revision number always has an even number of period-separated decimal integers. By default revision 1.1 is the first revision of a file. Each successive revision is given a new number by increasing the rightmost number by one. The following figure displays a few revisions, with newer revisions to the right.

       +-----+    +-----+    +-----+    +-----+    +-----+
       ! 1.1 !----! 1.2 !----! 1.3 !----! 1.4 !----! 1.5 !
       +-----+    +-----+    +-----+    +-----+    +-----+

It is also possible to end up with numbers containing more than one period, for example 1.3.2.2. Such revisions represent revisions on branches (Chapter 6, Branching and merging); such revision numbers are explained in detail in the section called “Branches and revisions”.