How can I use a CVS repository on Athena?
A CVS server is not necessary in order to use CVS. It is possible to use a CVS repository in a shared filesystem such as AFS. For example, to create a CVS repository in your homedir, you could do:
mkdir ~/repository setenv CVSROOT $HOME/repository cvs init
and you would then be able to "cvs add" directories and files in that repository as usual. Other users could be granted access to the repository via AFS directory acls, which you can set with the "fs sa" command.
Using a repository in AFS will be very convenient from Athena workstations and other machines with direct AFS access. For machines without AFS (most Windows and MacOS machines), it's possible to access AFS repositories via SSH, by setting your CVSROOT to:
:ext:athena.dialup.mit.edu:/mit/jruser/repository
and the CVS_RSH variable to "ssh"; some Windows and MacOS CVS clients may have a checkbox for "use CVS over SSH" instead. This will ssh into the Athena dialups to run the CVS commands, and while not an ideal solution, it seems to work reasonably well for some users.