cvs tag - how to tag a release

"CVS tag" FAQ: How do I tag a release of a software project with CVS?

Assume that you have a software project named KickStart checked into a CVS repository. Further assume that you want to tag the current release of the project with the name "Release-2001_09_15". Here's how to tag that release with the "cvs tag" command:

cvs checkout KickStart
cd KickStart
cvs -q tag Release-2001_09_15

You can name your release anything you want, but I try to follow a tag naming convention like this. You might want to tag the release with a version number, or maybe a version number and date. But again, that's up to you.

Checking out your tagged release with "cvs checkout"

After you've tagged a release with the "cvs tag" command, you can check this release out of your CVS repository at some later point. Just use a cvs checkout command ("cvs co", for short), like this:

cvs checkout -r Release-2001_09_15 KickStart

This CVC checkout command creates a directory named KickStart as usual, but the contents in the directory will be from the date/time when you tagged the repository with this tag name. It is a snapshot in time of your repository, which can be very useful.