<p>When doing a <code>cvs update</code>, you get a nice summary of the state of the repository, for example:</p>

<pre><code>M src/file1.txt
M src/file2.txt
C src/file3.txt
A src/file4.txt
? src/file5.txt
</code></pre>

<p>Is there a way to get this without actually updating? I know there is <code>cvs status</code>, but this is way to verbose:</p>

<pre><code>===================================================================
File: file6.txt        Status: Up-to-date

Working revision:    1.2
Repository revision: 1.2     /var/cvs/cvsroot/file6.txt,v
Sticky Tag:          (none)
Sticky Date:         (none)
Sticky Options:      (none)
</code></pre>

<p>I could of course make a script to do the transformation from the latter to the former, but it seems a waste of time since cvs can obviously produce the former.</p>

You can use the -n flag to get the update output without actually updating the files. You can also add -q (quiet) to suppress any server messages.
```
```
cvs -q -n update
```
```