{"id":5,"date":"2007-10-11T10:00:39","date_gmt":"2007-10-11T10:00:39","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2022-02-07T09:40:48","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T08:40:48","slug":"how_to_make_gentoo_s_cvs_access_suck_les","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/remi\/2007\/10\/11\/how_to_make_gentoo_s_cvs_access_suck_les\/","title":{"rendered":"How to make Gentoo’s CVS access suck less …"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post started out as a major rant against CVS and how it sucks to be using it from Europe and how all those round trips in the protocol make even just bumping a single ebuild a tedious task that I have never been able to do in under 4~5 minutes.<\/p>\n

But no! I shall not lower myself to this level and instead write a praise for the OpenSSH folks who through their l33t coding skills give us the opportunity to improve CVS for free \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

The problem : the CVS protocol sucks because for each file\/directory you want to update, CVS will open a new SSH connection to send its command. The SSH protocol does not really help with that since creating a new connection brings a lot of overhead.<\/p>\n

The solution : use the OpenSSH ControlMaster<\/code> option to tell it to use a single connection that stays open (somewhat like Keep-alive in HTTP) and that will be used to create new “sub-connections” that are much cheaper.<\/p>\n

“How?” you ask me. Well, here’s how.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Add this to your ~\/.ssh\/config<\/code>
    \n

    Host *
    \nControlMaster auto
    \nControlPath ~\/.ssh\/master-%r@%h:%p<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  2. After running ssh-agent, run the following command :
    \n

    ssh -M -N -f login@cvs.gentoo.org<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  3. Enjoy a 3x speed-up like I did! For those that doubt it, here’s how I measured
    \n

    cd gentoo-x86\/profiles
    \nfind &> \/dev\/null
    \ntime cvs up -dP
    \nssh -M -N -f login@cvs.gentoo.org
    \ntime cvs up -dP<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’d like to give a big “Thank You” to Robin<\/a> who suggested I try those steps and helped me set them up. Here’s to hoping it helps other fellow devs \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

    References<\/p>\n