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(cvsbook.info)Removing Directories

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Removing Directories
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As I said before, CVS doesn't really keep directories under version
control.  Instead, as a kind of cheap substitute, it offers certain odd
behaviors that in most cases do the "right thing".  One of these odd
behaviors is that empty directories can be treated specially.  If you
want to remove a directory from a project, you first remove all the
files in it

     floss$ cd dir
     floss$ rm file1 file2 file3
     floss$ cvs remove file1 file2 file3
       (output omitted)
     floss$ cvs ci -m "removed all files" file1 file2 file3
       (output omitted)

and then run update in the directory above it with the -P flag:

     floss$ cd ..
     floss$ cvs update -P
       (output omitted)

The -P option tells update to "prune" any empty directories - that is,
to remove them from the working copy.  Once that's done, the directory
can be said to have been removed; all of its files are gone, and the
directory itself is gone (from the working copy, at least, although
there is actually still an empty directory in the repository).

An interesting counterpart to this behavior is that when you run a plain
update, CVS does not automatically bring new directories from the
repository into your working copy.  There are a couple of different
justifications for this, none really worth going into here.  The short
answer is that from time to time you should run update with the -d flag,
telling it to bring down any new directories from the repository.