About MyCVS™

About CVS

The Concurrent Versions System (CVS) is a version control system for keeping track of all modifications to project source code files. CVS is widely used in both open source and proprietary software development projects, and is generally considered to be the best freely available, full-featured version control tool. Two special features make CVS particularly suited to collaborative development across the Internet:

1. CVS allows multiple developers to edit their own working copies of files simultaneously, then deals with combining all the changes and notifying developers when there are conflicts.
2. Remote access to source code file repositories. Developers who are project members can obtain and modify project files from virtually anywhere.

CVS is a client-server system. The CVS repository is maintained on a web server; clients run on users' machines and connect to the server via the Internet. You must have a CVS client on your local machine to access the CVS server for projects hosted on this site. Clients are available for nearly all platforms including: Unix, Windows, Macintosh, and any Java-based platform. This documentation includes instructions for running CVS in a Unix shell or WinCVS.

As a project member, CVS allows you to:

• Check out source files and directories
• View differences between versions of files
• View change log history and comments
• Commit changes made in your local copy of the source files to the main source code repository
• Update your local project files when you want to remain in sync with changes committed by other project members

If you are new to CVS, one of the best ways to learn about it is simply to jump in and begin using it. When you click on the Version control link in the Project Resources tool bar, you can follow the instructions on that page for checking out your own working copy of a particular project's source files.

For those looking for a step-by-step orientation of CVS, A Day with CVS, excerpted from the online version of Karl Fogel's book, Open Source Development with CVS, is highly recommended. Much of the CVS help information on this site comes from this authoritative source.