2010-02-11 21:53 AEST by Arthur Barrett - Got an error because CVS/Base was not being created on the mac using an old-ish version of CVS Suite 
2008:

MacAir:stage abarrett$ cvs ve
rClient: Concurrent Versions System (CVSNT) 2.5.03 (Scorpio) Build 3428 (client/server)
Server: Concurrent Versions System (CVSNT) 2.5.03 (Scorpio) Build 3428 (client/server)



MacAir:stage abarrett$ cvs up -j HEAD -e 
cvs server: Updating .
RCS file: /myrepo/scott/scott.do_difficult.prc,v
retrieving revision 1.1
retrieving revision 1.2
Merging differences between 1.1 and 1.2 into scott.do_difficult.prc
cvs [update aborted]: cannot open CVS/Base/scott.do_difficult.prc for writing: No such file or directory



If I manually create CVS/Base it all works OK:

MacAir:stage abarrett$ mkdir CVS/Base
MacAir:stage abarrett$ cvs up -j HEAD -e 
cvs server: Updating .
M scott.do_difficult.prc
RCS file: /myrepo/scott/scott.do_difficult.prc,v
retrieving revision 1.1
retrieving revision 1.2
Merging differences between 1.1 and 1.2 into scott.do_difficult.prc
RCS file: /myrepo/scott/scott.do_xxx.prc,v
retrieving revision 1.1
retrieving revision 1.2
Merging differences between 1.1 and 1.2 into scott.do_xxx.prc



command history:
  507  mkdir cvsmergetest
  508  cd cvsmergetest/
  509  mkdir dev
  510  cd dev
  511  vi scott.do_difficult.prc
  513  cvs -d :ext:localhost:/myrepo import -n -m "initial import" scott
  514  cd ..
  515  cvs -d :ext:localhost:/myrepo co scott
  516  cd scott
  517  cp scott.do_difficult.prc scott.do_xxx.prc
  518  cvs add -kx scott.do_xxx.prc 
  519  cvs ci -m "blat"
  520  cvs tag -b stage
  521  cd ..
  523  cvs -d :ext:localhost:/myrepo co -r stage -d stage scott
  524  rm -rf scott
  525  cvs -d :ext:localhost:/myrepo co scott
  526  cd scott
  527  vi scott.do_difficult.prc 
  528  cvs edit scott.do_xxx.prc 
  529  vi scott.do_xxx.prc 
  530  cvs ci -m "small change"
  531  cd ../stage/
  533  cvs up -j HEAD -e 
  534  mkdir CVS/Base
  535  cvs up -j HEAD -e