Essential Cvs

If you're a programmer, web site developer, writer, or other professional dealing with large numbers of files, you know the pain of trying to manage multiple revisions of multiple files, especially when you are collaborating with other people. Who changed what file when? What specific collection of file revisions combine to make up the shipping version of a product? Will your edits to a file conflict with someone else's edits to the same file? These are just some of the questions you'll face. CVS (Concurrent Versions System) is open source's answer. CVS is a source code management tool that first allows you to create a repository for files that you are collaboratively working on with other users. You and other users can then check out files you wish to edit, make whatever changes are necessary, and check the files back in again. Where possible, CVS automatically merges changes when two or more users edit the same file. CVS identifies changes from multiple sources that conflict with each other and that can't be resolved automatically. In either case, you are assured that edits to a file are never inadvertently overwritten or lost. CVS is a versatile tool, and it has many capabilities beyond those just described. For example, you can tag the specific versions of source code files that combine to make up a given release of a software product. This makes it possible at any later date to check out those same files and recreate the release. In Essential CVS, Jennifer Vesperman takes you through the basics of using CVS and shows you how to put the tool through its paces. Written for both CVS users and administrators, this book includes: * A quickstart guide to help you get CVS installed, and to quickly get you up to speed in the basic use of the tool * Chapters on advanced topics such as release tagging, branching, and the various methods for connecting to remote repositories * Detailed documentation for CVS repository administrators, discussing repository and project management, showing ways to manage multiple CVS users, and describing alternative CVS clients and administrative tools * A comprehensive reference to CVS commands, configuration file syntax, CVSROOT files and variables, environment variables used by CVS, and more * A handy quick-reference card to facilitate your day-to-day use of CVS CVS is open source software and a wonderful example of the power that the open source community places at your doorstep. Let Essential CVS be your guide to using and applying this power in your own projects.Vesperman, Jennifer is the author of 'Essential Cvs' with ISBN 9780596004590 and ISBN 0596004591.