Recipe 18.16. Storing Binary Files in CVS
18.16.1 Problem
CVS is great with plain ASCII text
files, but you are running into problems with binary files, like
binary executables, MS Word files, image files, and such. How can you
store binary files in the CVS repository without CVS doing strange
things to them and making them not work?
18.16.2 Solution
Use the -kb flags
with the add command, like this:
$ cvs update binaryfile
$ cvs add -kb binaryfile
$ cvs commit -m 'C proggie for timing tea' binaryfile
You should also check out binary files with the
-kb flags. If you are working with binary files
a lot, you can make this the default in your
~/.cvsrc.
18.16.3 Discussion
Making -kb the default means you will have to
use cvs add -kkv when
adding non-binary files. If you forget to use the
-kkv flags when adding a non-binary file, run
the following command:
$ cvs admin -kkv textfile
to modify the file for future commits and updates.
CVS makes a number of changes to text files that do no good to binary
files:
It changes linefeeds to carriage return/linefeeds, for cross-platform
compatibility. It performs keyword expansion, so that any string in a binary file
that looks like a CVS keyword will be changed. Embedded strings in
the form $keyword$ and
$keyword:...$ are replaced with their actual
values whenever you fetch a new revision of the file. This is
definitely not something you want to happen to a binary file.
18.16.4 See Also
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