What is CVS?

phpsharma

Hi All,

I am so much confused about CVS. What exactly CVS and how it works for me as a php programmer. How can I feel the real power of CVS. What are the tools that needs to make compliance with it?. Please can any one here to help me to understand this whole process of CVS.

What are the advantages of using CVS.

Thanks,
sharma

Shrike

CVS (Concurrent Versioning System, I think) allows you to keep a history of file iterations. Each time you modify or further a piece of code, you commit the change into CVS and the CVS server writes the old version to the history. It also does some other stuff like combining changes, which is good when lots of people work on the same source code. The history lets you roll back when everything goes arse over tit 😉

Weedpacket

If you want to see a live example, it's used to maintain PHP's source code.

phpsharma

Hi ,

Thanks for your replys. I have downloaded a copy of xoops system and i would like to run a website with it.

what I understand from the above replys is if they change the source file on their server it automatically reflects on my local file(may be a auto download or update).

Is this correct?

In this case how can i connect to their cvs setup?. Is it require any special setup/software needs for me.

Please clarify.

Thanks
sharma

Shrike

You will need a CVS client. There are lots around such as WinCVS and Tortoise on Windows.

It works as follows: You check a CVS module (which contains the entire source tree) to your local machine. You then work on your version, and commit the changed files back to the server. If other people have made changes in between your checkout and commit, you will need to update the module and resolve any file conflicts.