[RESOLVED] Desire a good Windows GUI for Linux CVS

Kudose

Salut!

I just released my software as "free to use and develop" (go me!) and just setup a CVS (because it seems more widely used than SVN ... and I just recently heard of SVN) to allow others to work on the php webware without jacking up anyone elses work.

Now what I need is a good GUI to connect to it and basically drag and drop like you can with WS_FTP and other FTP GUIs.

I did a quick Google search, but I think I would rather have the opinions of people that have actually done this before.

Is TortoiseCVS the way to go? I'd really like more of a standalone application with automatic dos2unix (Remove windows line breaks ^M) and other nifty stuff.

Thanks for any help.

laserlight

At this point, I think that Subversion is popular enough to be considered - CVS may be used on more projects simply because it came first, so you have to also consider that Subversion does improve on what CVS is able to do.

If you still want to use CVS, then TortoiseCVS is the way to go for a Windows GUI. If you decide to use Subversion instead, then TortoiseSVN would be it. The line ending handling can be done in Subversion (and thus in TortoiseSVN) as stated in the Subversion book on End-of-Line Character Sequences.

That said, I would recommend a distributed version control system instead, particularly Bazaar. Although Bazaar's Windows GUI support is not yet mature, it is easy to use even on the Windows command line. With a distributed VCS, people can have access to full version control on their own copies of your source code. Bazaar also does not need any special server software (though it does have a smart server), can be used over HTTP, SFTP and SSH, so pretty much any webhost will do.

Kudose

Thanks laserlight.

I will check out SVN and Bazaar.

I am leaning towards SVN though because I would like a centralized distribution point. I am sure Bazaar can handle it, but it seems SVN is intended for that sort of thing. Or am I wrong? (still have to check them out more)

Sxooter

Also, look at something like Eclipse, the IDE, which supports lots of languages and has plugins for both CVS or SVN.

I highly recommend SVN. It's a bit slower than CVS for large checkouts, but for day to day stuff it's a million times faster, and commits are atomic, which totally rocks when you've got some kind of conflict.

csn

+1 on SVN. I've been using it for about 2-3 years now and haven't had any serious problems (had to unwedge my repository a time or two). I've even done major updates and haven't had any data loss. SVN really makes life much easier.

laserlight

I am leaning towards SVN though because I would like a centralized distribution point. I am sure Bazaar can handle it, but it seems SVN is intended for that sort of thing. Or am I wrong? (still have to check them out more)

Subversion is designed only to work with a central repository. Bazaar and other distributed version control systems are designed such that they can work with multiple repositories (or what Bazaar calls branches). Having a single repository is then a special case of this distributed model. One way is to designate a central repository/branch on a network, then everyone else has their own repository/branch so they have access to all the features of version control. They push their changes to the central repository/branch when they are ready and connected to the network.

At the moment Bazaar is slow for projects of similiar magnitude to the Linux kernel, but I have my doubts if your code can reach that size before more performance improvements come through in later versions of Bazaar.

Kudose

laserlight wrote:
At the moment Bazaar is slow for projects of similiar magnitude to the Linux kernel, but I have my doubts if your code can reach that size before more performance improvements come through in later versions of Bazaar.

How ironic ... I am developing my own Linux kernel.

jk. 😉

Thanks for everyones answers. 🙂