Essential CVS, 2nd ed., O'Reilly
Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio
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C# Online.NET Book Review
The Concurrent Versions System (CVS)—or Concurrent Versioning System—comprises a version control system. CVS tracks all changes to a set of files. CVS enables developer collaboration on a software development project. Advanced features include backing out file changes, marking a file set for retrieval as a unit, and merging multiple users changes. CVS is available under the GNU General Public License. CVS is extremely popular; but, it is not supported by any commercial entity. Instead, open source contributors maintain the software and documentation.
The book is concise and well organized—progressing logically from basic to advanced functionality. It features good coverage of local and remote access, logging, scripting, and security. (The topics of security and scripting are especially well done.) The "CVS Quickstart Guide" in Chapter 2 is all that most casual users will need to learn to use CVS for checking files in and out.
True, much of the material in the book can be found online; but, here it is gathered and organized in one place. It is more of a tutorial than a comprehensive reference manual: This kept the book small and manageable. And, the book provides a foundation from which you can research any more complex topics on the Web.
Also, the book covers setup and administration topics which can be difficult to understand using only the available online resources. Unix people will find all they need build, install, configure, and operate CVS. But, Windows users will need to do some online research.
The book does not attempt to address all possible CVS question and scenarios. A future edition might benefit from more complete coverage of branch locking and merging, branching strategies, requesting specific items from a certain revision, and server security.
The author writes in a very readable style. She manages to inform readers how to perform various CVS tasks without getting them bogged down in too much detail. However, her background in Linux and Unix shows through in the almost Man page style of most topics.
The book uses Unix shell commands in CVS command examples;but, an appendix details various graphical CVS interfaces.
Bottom line
Essential CVS is the best tutorial available for beginner through intermediate Unix users.
Publisher's description
This easy-to-follow reference shows a variety of professionals how to use the Concurrent Versions System (CVS), the open source tool that lets you manage versions of anything stored in files. Ideal for software developers tracking different versions of the same code, this comprehensive book also helps system administrators and project managers manage large quantities of documents. A full command reference details aspects of customizing CVS for automation, logging, branching, merging documents, and creating alerts.
This easy-to-follow reference shows a variety of professionals how to use the Concurrent Versions System (CVS), the open source tool that lets you manage versions of anything stored in files. Ideal for software developers tracking different versions of the same code, this new edition has been expanded to explain common usages of CVS for system administrators, project managers, software architects, user-interface (UI) specialists, graphic designers and others.
Current for version 1.12, Essential CVS, 2nd Edition offers an overview of CVS, explains the core concepts, and describes the commands that most people use on a day-to-day basis. For those who need to get up to speed rapidly, the book's Quickstart Guide shows you how to build and use a basic CVS repository with the default settings and a minimum of extras. You'll also find:
- A full command reference that details all aspects of customizing CVS for automation, logging, branching, merging documents, and creating alerts
- Examples and descriptions of the most commonly used options for each command
- Why and when to tag or branch your project, tagging before releases, and using branching to create a bugfix version of a project
- Details on the systems used in CVS to permit multiple developers to work on the same project without loss of data
An entire section devoted to document version management and project management includes ways to import and export projects, work with remote repositories, and shows how to fix things that can go wrong when using CVS. You'll find more screenshots in this edition as well as examples of using graphical CVS clients to run CVS commands. Essential CVS also includes a FAQ that answers common queries in the CVS mailing list to get you up and running with this system quickly and painlessly.
About the author(s)
Jennifer Vesperman is the author of Essential CVS. She writes for the O'Reilly Network, the Linux Documentation Project, and occasionally Linux.Com. As a programmer and system administrator, she currently works with Cybersource, an Australian IT consulting firm. She is the current Coordinator for LinuxChix, an advocacy and support group that focuses on women who use and develop open source programs (especially Linux).
Table of Contents (abbreviated)
- Part I. Introduction
- 1. What Is CVS?
- 2. CVS Quickstart Guide
- Part II. Using CVS
- 3. Basic Use of CVS
- 4. Tagging and Branching
- 5. Multiple Users
- Part III. CVS Administration
- 6. Repository Management
- 7. Project Management
- 8. Remote Repositories
- 9. Troubleshooting
- Part IV. Reference
- 10. Command Reference
- 11. Miscellaneous Topics Reference
- Part V. Appendixes
- A. Clients and Operating Systems
- B. Administrators' Tools
- C. Frequently Asked Questions
