on our environment we are using CVS and ant to build and deploy releases of a
customer application. The releases are structured in submodules on different
tags and branches which are referenced by a xml file.

A release is defined like this
--> build.xml
--> units.xml

the units.xml describes the different modules of the application like the following:
<units>
<unit>
<name>module-a</name>
<tag>v39-0</tag>
<repository>XXXX</repository>
</unit>
<unit>
<name>module-a</name>
<tag>HEAD</tag>
<repository>XXXX</repository>
</unit>
...
</units>

Why we generated this issue?
when we checkout the release via hudson and runs the ant task to checkout the
different units on different tags/branches - the build process works fine.
when the cvs updates process is executed - all submodules are updated to the
branch of the release - the build of the wholes release fails.

We patched the following class to get it working on our environment:
Path: /core/main/java/scm/CVSSCM.java
Output of svn diff :
Index: CVSSCM.java
===================================================================
— CVSSCM.java (revision 20403)
+++ CVSSCM.java (working copy)
@@ -514,11 +514,12 @@
if(dryRun)
cmd.add("-n");
cmd.add("update","-PdC");

• if (branch != null) {
  + /*
  + if (branch != null) { cmd.add("-r", branch); }

  configureDate(cmd, date);

• + */
  if(flatten) {
  ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

This patch provides the functionality to preserve the given tag/branch of the
underlaying modules in the given environment. For us it works fine.

Can you check the patch please. It would be very helpfully when the patch can be
integrated into one of the next releases of hudson.