CVSNT - deleting files from repository

[ASB]

Source control is on CVSNT, mainly because it gives a viable way of offline working and Team Foundation Server is complete tripe with offline working.

Anyway, now in the positions where there are a large number of files that are redundant. These have been deleted from the repository - which only marks them as dead (otherwise how could previous version be recovered). What I really want to do is really delete them.

Anybody know how to do this (can't find anything by searching - but then I'm crap at finding things generally).

[Addanc]

If this is a windows port of CVS, then you can do something like:

rm theFilesYouWantToDelete
or in Windows speak
del theFilesYouWantToDelete
cvs -d whereEverYourRepositoryIs rm theFilesYouWantToDelete

You then need privilege to access the repository directly. The "cvs rm" sticks all the deleted files in a sub-directory of the original location (referred to as the cellar I think). Just go in there back'em up and delete them. Best to back them up just in case.

[xchaotic]

Source control is on CVSNT, mainly because it gives a viable way of offline working and Team Foundation Server is complete tripe with offline working.

Anyway, now in the positions where there are a large number of files that are redundant. These have been deleted from the repository - which only marks them as dead (otherwise how could previous version be recovered). What I really want to do is really delete them.

Anybody know how to do this (can't find anything by searching - but then I'm crap at finding things generally).

The easiest way - recreate the repository from scratch without the deleted files. You lose your change history, but with your files really deleted, it's useless anyway.

If you want the nitty gritty, go to the CVS repository and find the corresponding RCS files there (same name but with ,v appended). Delete all files.

Finally, don't use CVS!
It's because of problems like these, sane people have moved on to SCMs they can use (GIT, Mercurial etc).

[ASB]

Cheers,

I've just deleted the files from the repository and it all seems OK.

[bored]

Finally, don't use CVS!
It's because of problems like these, sane people have moved on to SCMs they can use (GIT, Mercurial etc).

Can you permanently delete files from GIT/Mercurial? I know it's impossible in Subversion. And surely just going into the filesystem and deleting the files is as simple as it gets?