Providing customized source code control with CVS

This website cannot cover everything about CVS, and so you may need to go farther afield. The main external resources are:

• The official documentation
• Other resources accessible with a browser
• Books
• Mailing lists
• Books

The official documentation page is an excellent source, and lists everything I list here and more. The official CVS Manual by Cederqvist et al. is good documentation.

There are some very good resources on the Web. Karl Fogel wrote an excellent book, the CVS parts being freely available on-line. There is the FAQ-o-Matic hosted by Pascal Molli, which has answers to a wide variety of questions. refcards.com produces a useful printable reference card. Sourceforge hosts many and varied projects, and they use CVS as I recommend it. They've fielded a large variety of problems, and have written documentation, and section 6 (CVS instructions) is particularly useful.

There are several mailing lists that deal with various implementations of CVS. There are guidelines to follow for best results when mailing to such lists:

• Post in plain text. No HTML, and preferably no MIME encoding or smart quotes.
• Do not include anything in a proprietary format, such as Microsoft Word.
• Make an effort to localize the problem, and ask specific questions.
• Remember that these are not paid support people. Be polite.

For detail and explanation (including some indication of the mindset here), read Eric S. Raymond's How to Ask Questions the Smart Way.

The general CVS mailing list is called info-cvs, and there is searchable archive you can look through. The direct address is info-cvs@gnu.org.

The mailing list for WinCVS, MacCVS, and gCVS is hosted by Yahoo, and can be joined here.

There is a CVSNT mailing list, and an archive of the list. The direct address is cvsnt@cvsnt.org.

There are two books on CVS that I would highly recommend to anybody, novice or expert:

• Open Source Development with CVS is a good general reference.
• CVS Pocket Reference, a handy pocket guide with complete explanations and good advice.

All contents of these pages Copyright 2002 by David H. Thornley.
Permission granted for verbatim copying and use within an organization.