CVS, the Concurrent Versions System, is used to develop SANE. To get the latest SANE software (sane-backends and sane-frontends) our CVS server can be used. But keep in mind that the software in CVS is not tested so the risk of bugs is much higher than with stable releases.
There is development and anonymous CVS access. If you are not a developer, please use the anonymous access as mentioned below.
To use anonymous CVS, use the following commands (just press enter when asked for the password):
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.alioth.debian.org:/cvsroot/sane login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.alioth.debian.org:/cvsroot/sane co sane-backends
Replace sane-backends by sane-frontends to get the source code of sane-frontends. For more details on how to use CVS please consult the man page cvs(1).
If you just want to look at one file and don't want to download the whole CVS tree, you can use cvsweb or any other of the methods mentioned on the Alioth CVS page to browse the tree.
If you intend to use the development CVS server, get a login at Alioth and contact one of the SANE project managers to get added to the project. Don't be surprised that you get a "foo-guest" account, that's just the normal naming scheme. After being added to the project, it can take some hours until you get write access to CVS. Development CVS access is done by ssh (version 1):
export CVS_RSH=ssh
cvs -z3 -d:ext:developername@cvs.alioth.debian.org:/cvsroot/sane co sane-backends
For getting access to SANE frontends, just replace sane-backends by sane-frontends in the commands above. To get access to the html pages, use module html. The HTML pages are automatically updated when any change is done in module html. Also, the HTML lists of scanners/backends supported by the CVS version of SANE is automatically created when changing any .desc file.
Make sure that you really use ssh to access the CVS server. Have a look at the file CVS/Root in your local repository. It should contain a line starting with :ext: and not :pserver:. If you don't use ssh, your password is not encrypted and CVS log messages won't work. You can use the usual ssh access methods. E.g. you can upload your public key so you don't need to enter the password every time.
The rules are pretty simple: If you change anything in your backend, do whatever you want. Just don't break compilation :-). Don't change backends of other active developers. For backends of non-active developers or any other code you should either know what you are doing or ask on sane-devel if the change is acceptable. Fixing spelling mistakes or broken links in the HTML pages is appreciated. Before doing major changes please ask on sane-devel.
When doing changes (commits) to sane-backends or sane-frontends, make sure you remember to include an entry in the ChangeLog file. The format is simple, with the date the change was committed to CVS, the name and email address of the one doing the commit, the list of files changed (ignoring ChangeLog itself), and a description of the change. Example:
2000-03-06 Petter Reinholdtsen * configure.in configure: New version is 1.0.2.
You can use the same descriptions in the ChangeLog and the commit messages. The ChangeLog file is used in addition to the commit messages because it's available even when there is no access to the CVS server. If you intend to change more than one file in CVS, it's ok to add all the entries to the ChangeLog only once per day.
If you are interested in the changes in the SANE CVS tree, subscribe to the sane-commit mailing list.
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