Most commands in PCL-CVS require that you have a *cvs* buffer. The commands that you use to get one are listed below. For each, a ‘cvs’ process will be run, the output will be parsed by PCL-CVS, and the result will be printed in the *cvs* buffer (see Buffer contents, for a description of the buffer’s contents).
Run a ‘cvs update’ command. You will be asked for the directory in which the ‘cvs update’ will be run.
Run a ‘cvs -n update’ command. This is identical to the previous command, except that it will only check what needs to be done but will not change anything. You will be asked for the directory in which the ‘cvs -n update’ will be run.
Run a ‘cvs status’ command. You will be asked for the directory in which the ‘cvs status’ will be run.
Run a ‘cvs checkout’ command. You will be asked for the directory in which the ‘cvs update’ will be run and the module to be checked out.
Populate the *cvs* buffer by just looking at the CVS/Entries
files. This is very much like cvs-examine except that it does
not access the CVS repository, which is a major advantage when the
repository is far away. But of course, it will not be able to detect
when a file needs to be updated or merged.
The first four of
those commands are also reachable from the menu bar
under ‘Tools->PCL-CVS’. Finally, an alternative way is to visit
the CVS administrative subdirectory in your work area with a simple
prefix argument. For example C-u C-x C-f ~/my/work/CVS RET. This
by default runs cvs-quickdir but the specific behavior can be
changed with cvs-dired-action and cvs-dired-use-hook.
By default, the commands above will descend recursively into subdirectories. You can avoid that behavior by including ‘-l’ in the flags for the command. These flags can be set by giving a prefix argument to the command (e.g., by typing C-u M-x cvs-update RET -l RET).