CVS - Concurrent Versions System
Introduction to CVS
CVS is a version control system, an important component of Source Configuration Management (SCM). Using it, you can record the history of sources files, and documents. It fills a similar role to the free software RCS, PRCS, and Aegis packages.
CVS is a production quality system in wide use around the world, including many free software projects.
While CVS stores individual file history in the same format as RCS, it offers the following significant advantages over RCS:
- It can run scripts which you can supply to log CVS operations or enforce site-specific policies.
- Client/server CVS enables developers scattered by geography or slow modems to function as a single team. The version history is stored on a single central server and the client machines have a copy of all the files that the developers are working on. Therefore, the network between the client and the server must be up to perform CVS operations (such as checkins or updates) but need not be up to edit or manipulate the current versions of the files. Clients can perform all the same operations which are available locally.
- In cases where several developers or teams want to each maintain their own version of the files, because of geography and/or policy, CVS's vendor branches can import a version from another team (even if they don't use CVS), and then CVS can merge the changes from the vendor branch with the latest files if that is what is desired.
- Unreserved checkouts, allowing more than one developer to work on the same files at the same time.
- CVS provides a flexible modules database that provides a symbolic mapping of names to components of a larger software distribution. It applies names to collections of directories and files. A single command can manipulate the entire collection.
- CVS servers run on most unix variants, and clients for Windows NT/95, OS/2 and VMS are also available. CVS will also operate in what is sometimes called server mode against local repositories on Windows 95/NT.
CVS News
Recent CVS news, including release announcements, are posted on the NEWS page. To receive the same news via email, subscribe to the cvs-announce mailing list (these announcements are duplicated on the bug-cvs@nongnu.org and info-cvs@nongnu.org mailing lists).
CVS Documentation
The manual is available from ximbiot.com (archived), and gnu.org.
Downloading CVS
CVS can be downloaded from https://ftp.gnu.org/non-gnu/cvs/ or one of the mirrors (make sure to check the non-gnu/cvs directory on the mirrors). For other ways to obtain CVS, please read How to get GNU Software.
CVS Help and Bug Reports
Help requests and bug reports are handled for free, on a volunteer basis, on the CVS Mailing Lists.
Companies offering commercial support for CVS are listed in the CVS Wiki. You may also wish to look at March Hare for CVSNT support as well as Syntevo for SmtartCVS.
CVS Development
You may browse the current CVS sources on Savannah.
You may also view the project pages.
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