How to check out every file and every branch at once?

[Doug Lee]

I know you can check out an entire CVS tree with one command that
checks it out at the top, but is there any existing way to not only
check out each file but also each branch?  I envision something like
this:

Imagine I have a CVS repository containing two projects, p1 and p2.
P1 just has a HEAD branch, but p2 has HEAD, b1, and b2.  Each project
has three files in it, but in project p2, HEAD contains files p2_f1 and
p2_f2, branch b1 contains files p2_f1 and p2_f3, and branch b2 contains files
p2_f2 and p2_f3.  I want something that will create a checkout tree like
this:

root
    p1
        head
            p1_f1
            p1_f2
            p1_f3
    p2
        head
            p2_f1
            p2_f2
        b1
            p2_f1
            p2_f3
        b2
            p2_f2
            p2_f3

Of course, I want subdirectories to be handled correctly as well:  A
subdirectory under a branch should contain the files that exist in
that subdirectory on that branch.  It is not particularly important to
me whether or not the subdirectory exists emptily or does not exist at
all under branches where it contains no files.

Does such a thing exist, or do I need to seek time to write it in
Perl?

This is part of a larger scheme to implement something that, given a
CVS root and the name or path of a "library" module within that tree,
will report what files appear to need updating in the library from any
other source and what files, conversely, look newer in the library
than in any particular other place.  I doubt that exists yet, but if
it does, I'm certainly all ears.

-- 
Doug Lee           address@hidden        http://www.dlee.org
Bartimaeus Group   address@hidden   http://www.bartsite.com
"Sometimes I think my learning curve is a circle." -- David Andrews