Thread: CVS: How do you use it?

CVS, the Concurrent Versioning System, is an old VCS or Version Control System (also known as source control).

The purpose of the thing is that it stores your work. But it doesn't just store it, as any filesystem can do, it does much more. First, and probably most importantly, it stores every version you ever committed to the system. In other words, you can go back to any old version if you broke something horribly in the new one, or just to compare something. Second, it allows you to branch off and develop two different versions in parallel - for example, you can do a complete rewrite of a component and meanwhile, on another branch, fix bugs in some release version and push that out even though the component is not yet stable - the branch simply uses the old version of the component. Third, it coordinates the work of many people, to make sure that concurrent edits of the same stuff do not conflict in a way that ruins everything. Different VCSs have different strategies there.

There are many VCSs. My personal favourite, because of its ease of installation and use, is Subversion, an open-source project with the intention of completely replacing CVS by providing very similar usage but addressing the shortcomings of the older system.

Here's a link to the subversion web page, for more info on that :

Subversion

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/

the free online book on subversion.