C.4.3 Editinfo

The editinfo feature has been rendered obsolete. To set a default editor for log messages use the CVSEDITOR, EDITOR environment variables (see Environment variables) or the ‘-e’ global option (see Global options). See verifymsg, for information on the use of the verifymsg feature for evaluating log messages.

If you want to make sure that all log messages look the same way, you can use the editinfo file to specify a program that is used to edit the log message. This program could be a custom-made editor that always enforces a certain style of the log message, or maybe a simple shell script that calls an editor, and checks that the entered message contains the required fields.

If no matching line is found in the editinfo file, the editor specified in the environment variable $CVSEDITOR is used instead. If that variable is not set, then the environment variable $EDITOR is used instead. If that variable is not set a default will be used. See Committing your changes.

The editinfo file is often most useful together with the rcsinfo file, which can be used to specify a log message template.

Each line in the editinfo file consists of a regular expression and a command-line template. The template must include a program name, and can include any number of arguments. The full path to the current log message template file is appended to the template.

One thing that should be noted is that the ‘ALL’ keyword is not supported. If more than one matching line is found, the first one is used. This can be useful for specifying a default edit script in a module, and then overriding it in a subdirectory.

If the repository name does not match any of the regular expressions in this file, the ‘DEFAULT’ line is used, if it is specified.

If the edit script exits with a non-zero exit status, the commit is aborted.

Note: when CVS is accessing a remote repository, or when the ‘-m’ or ‘-F’ options to cvs commit are used, editinfo will not be consulted. There is no good workaround for this; use verifymsg instead.