CVS Annotate returns blank output

Question

Hello, I am working on a script that will get the user name associated with a CVS line number change and am using

cvs annotate filepath

to do it.

However, sometimes I run accost files that give blank output when annotate is run on them. Is there any solution to this problem?

I should note that I am working within a code base that was written about 20 year ago and it is huge. I am wondering if maybe most of the CVS ,v files are messed up.

Thanks for your time and input!

Answer 1

Can you do a cvs log on the files? What's the exit code of cvs after you run the annotate command?

Answer 2

I ended up using the -r option and sending it the latest revision number. For some reason that cleared things up in every case it was failing and gave the same output in cases it was not failing.