The CVS program is part of NetBSD. If you have an old release which didn't come with CVS, you can install it either by using pkg_add, or building from pkgsrc. To install via pkg_add, just do:

% pkg_add ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/OS Ver/arch/All/cvs

where OS Ver, and arch can be obtained by running.

% sysctl kern.osrelease hw.machine_arch

Kernel and userland sources are usually places in /usr/src. This directory is not present by default in the NetBSD installation, and you will need to create it first. As it is in a system directory, you will need root access to create the directory, and make sure your normal user account can write to it. For demonstration purpose, it is assumed that your non-root login is “carlo”:

% su
Password: *****
# mkdir /usr/src
# chown carlo /usr/src

If you want to use pkgsrc (which is most likely), you can prepare /usr/pkgsrc at the same time:

# mkdir /usr/pkgsrc
# chown carlo /usr/pkgsrc

Please note that for the subsequent steps, root access is neither needed nor recommended, so this preparation step should be done first. All CVS operations can (and should) be done as normal user, and you don't need root privileges any more:

# exit
% 

To get the NetBSD kernel and userland sources from scratch without having anything in /usr/src, run:

% setenv CVS_RSH ssh
% setenv CVSROOT anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot
% cd /usr
% cvs checkout -r<BRANCH> -P src

Where <BRANCH> is the release branch to be checked out, for example, “netbsd-1-6” or “netbsd-2-0”. Note that the branch name does not include the patch level, thus for 1.6.2 it would still be 1-6. If you want the branch for NetBSD 2.0 and beyond, the command would look like:

% cvs checkout -rnetbsd-2 -P src

To obtain the NetBSD-current source just omit “-rBRANCH” and replace it by “-A”:

% cd /usr
% cvs checkout -A -P src

If you have checked out sources from a release branch in /usr/src and want to update them to get the latest security- and bug-fixes, run:

% cd /usr/src
% cvs update -Pd

To update your NetBSD-current source tree, add the -A flag: cvs update -A -Pd.

CVS is usually quite fast for fetching sources if you have decent internet connectivity. However, in a case you are using a modem, you may wish to compress data for the update. In that case run:

% cvs -z3 checkout ...

or

% cvs -z3 -d $CVSROOT update ...

The 3 is the level of compression, you can use any number between 1 and 9 where 1 is the fastest compression method and 9 the best but slowest compression method. Keep in mind that this will put extra load on the CVS server!

Pkgsrc (“package source”) is the NetBSD packages collection which can be used to easily install and deinstall software on your NetBSD system. See Chapter 30, The package collection for more information.

To fetch pkgsrc from scratch into /usr/pkgsrc, run:

% setenv CVS_RSH ssh
% setenv CVSROOT anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot
% cd /usr
% cvs checkout -P pkgsrc

This will create the directory pkgsrc in your /usr and all the package source will be stored under /usr/pkgsrc.

To update pkgsrc just do:

% cd /usr/pkgsrc
% cvs update -Pd

If you find yourself typing some options to cvs over and over again, you can as well put them into a file .cvsrc in your home directory. The following example is taken from my $HOME/.cvsrc, it is useful for just typing cvs update on a directory with a branch checked out to update it (adding -A would revert the branch to the -current branch, which is not what I usually want!), I prefer unified diffs, transfers should do some compression and “cvs update” should be mostly quiet:

#update -dPA
update  -dP
rdiff   -u
diff    -u
cvs     -z3 -q