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OPTIONS
| _rrev | Check in revision rev. |
| _r | The bare _r option (without any revision) has an unusual meaning in ci. With other RCS commands, a bare -r option specifies the most recent revision on the default branch, but with ci, a bare -r option reestablishes the default behavior of releasing a lock and removing the working file, and is used to override any default _l or _u options established by shell aliases or scripts. |
| _l[rev] | Works like -r, except it performs an additional co _l for the deposited revision. Thus, the deposited revision is immediately checked out again and locked. This is useful for saving a revision although one wants to continue editing it after the checkin. |
| _u[rev] | Works like _l, except that the deposited revision is not locked. This lets one read the working file immediately after checkin. |
The _l, bare -r, and _u options are mutually exclusive and silently override each other. For example, ci _u -r is equivalent to ci -r because bare -r overrides _u.
| _f[rev] | Forces a deposit; the new revision is deposited even it is not different from the preceding one. |
| _k[rev] | Searches the working file for keyword values to determine its revision number, creation date, state, and author—see co(1)—and assigns these values to the deposited revision, rather than computing them locally. It also generates a default login message noting the login of the caller and the actual checkin date. This option is useful for software distribution. A revision that is sent to several sites should be checked in with the _k option at these sites to preserve the original number, date, author, and state. The extracted keyword values and the default log message can be overridden with the options _d, _m, _s, _w, and any option that carries a revision number. |
| _q[rev] | Quiet mode; diagnostic output is not printed. A revision that is not different from the preceding one is not deposited, unless _f is given. |
| -i[rev] | Initial checkin; report an error if the RCS file already exists. This avoids race conditions in certain applications. |
| _j[rev] | Just check in and do not initialize; report an error if the RCS file does not already exist. |
| _I[rev] | Interactive mode; the user is prompted and questioned even if the standard input is not a terminal. |
| _d[date] | Uses date for the checkin date and time. The date is specified in free format as explained in co(1). This is useful for lying about the checkin date, and for _k if no date is available. If date is empty, the working file's time of last modification is used. |
| _M[rev] | Set the modification time on any new working file to be the date of the retrieved revision. For example, ci _d _M _u f does not alter f's modification time, even if f's contents change due to keyword substitution. Use this option with care; it can confuse make(1). |
| _mmsg | Uses the string msg as the log message for all revisions checked in. By convention, log messages that start with # are comments and are ignored by programs like GNU emacs's vc package. Also, log messages that start with clumpname (followed by whitespace) are meant to be clumped together if possible, even if they are associated with different files; the clumpname label is used only for clumping, and is not considered to be part of the log message itself. |
| _nname | Assigns the symbolic name to the number of the checked-in revision. ci prints an error message if that name is already assigned to another number. |
| _Nname | Same as _n, except that it overrides a previous assignment of name. |
| _sstate | Sets the state of the checked-in revision to the identifier state. The default state is Exp. |
| _tfile | Writes descriptive text from the contents of the named file into the RCS file, deleting the existing text. The file cannot begin with _. |
| _t_string | Write descriptive text from the string into the RCS file, deleting the existing text. |
The _t option, in both its forms, has effect only during an initial checkin; it is silently ignored otherwise.
During the initial checkin, if _t is not given, ci obtains the text from standard input, terminated by end-of-file or by a line containing a dot (.) by itself. The user is prompted for the text if interaction is possible; see _I.