cvs-fast-export mit Homebrew, apk, apt, MacPorts, Nix installieren

Projektlinks

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream-Dokumentation
• Paketmanager-Seite

Befehle und Aliase

• cvs-fast-export
• cvsconvert
• cvssync

Projektgeschichte

The official hacker's guide says the program began as Keith Packard's one-off `parsecvs` hack in early 2006 during the X repository migration from CVS to Git. Bart Massey briefly maintained it before Eric S. Raymond took over in late 2012, added the fast-export output stage, renamed the project, and later made the parser re-entrant and parallelized master-file ingestion.

Adoptionsgeschichte

The tool belongs to the post-CVS migration era, where package maintainers and project archivists needed trustworthy conversion of old CVS and RCS histories into Git. The official resource page explicitly notes that it is commonly packaged as cvs-fast-export and that related package names include cvs-fast-export-tools and cvs-fast-export-doc.

Wie es verwendet wird

Users point cvs-fast-export at CVS or RCS master files and pipe or save the generated stream for Git import. The distribution also ships `cvssync` for fetching remote CVS masters, `cvsconvert` for trial conversion and content-mismatch checks against the original CVS, and `cvsstrip` for reducing bug reports to metadata-only trees.

Warum Paket-Nerds sich dafür interessieren

For package-history work, cvs-fast-export is unusually meta: it exists to rescue the history behind older packages. Its NEWS file documents years of edge-case fixes around CVS timestamps, vendor branches, ignore files, branch topology, fast-export compatibility, and in 2026 a port from C to Go intended to eliminate chronic memory-corruption failure modes.

Zeitleiste

• 2006: Originated as Keith Packard's `parsecvs` during the X CVS-to-Git migration.
• 2012: Eric S. Raymond took over maintenance and added fast-export output.
• 2015: GitLab project created and release 1.32 noted a source type declaration for reposurgeon.
• 2020: buildprep script added to simplify source builds.
• 2026: Version 2.0 ported the code to Go.
• 2026: Version 2.2 released on June 21.

Related projects

• The README and hacker's guide connect cvs-fast-export to Git fast-import, CVS, RCS, Graphviz DOT output, reposurgeon, cvssync, cvsconvert, and cvsstrip.

Quellen

• http://www.catb.org/~esr/cvs-fast-export/
• https://gitlab.com/esr/cvs-fast-export/-/raw/master/README.adoc
• https://gitlab.com/esr/cvs-fast-export/-/raw/master/NEWS.adoc
• https://gitlab.com/esr/cvs-fast-export/-/raw/master/hacking.adoc
• https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/esr%2Fcvs-fast-export
• https://gitlab.com/esr/cvs-fast-export/-/tags?format=atom