Re: A series of CVS questions.

[Mark D. Baushke]

Sam Talebbeik <address@hidden> writes:

> I have a long list of feature questions about CVS. I have used CVS on a
> previous project years back. I am currently using a "commercial" product 
> in my present project. I would like to know if certain features of 
> this "commercial" product are or will be available in CVS.
> 
> Is this the right forum to ask these questions ? 

Yes.

Be advised that the roadmap for "will be available" is not well defined.
There are things in the TODO list (see the URL:
http://ccvs.cvshome.org/source/browse/ccvs/TODO for the latest version
of the file), but it is not at all clear when (or if) they will ever be
implemented.

If you have features to propose, this is the place where plead with
someone to consider implementing them. If you are interested in doing
the implementation, send patches to address@hidden with test cases
and you are more likely to see them get adopted.

You may also wish to take a look at other systems that do slightly
different things than CVS. CVS is not the only game in town... in fact,
I urge anyone considering moving from an existing commercial situation
to something else to survey at least the following list.

Aegis:      <URL:http://aegis.sourceforge.net/>
Bitkeeper:  <URL:http://www.bitkeeper.com/>
CSSC:       <URL:http://cssc.sourceforge.net/> (aka GNU CSSC)
CVS:        <URL:http://www.cvshome.org/>
CVSNT:      <URL:http://www.cvsnt.org/> (Windows NT CVS)
Meta-CVS:   <URL:http://users.footprints.net/~kaz/mcvs.html>
Subversion: <URL:http://subversion.tigris.org/>
RCE:        <URL:http://www.ipd.uka.de/~RCE/> (by Walter Tichy orig RCS author)
RCS:        <URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/rcs.html>
Vesta:      <URL:http://www.vestasys.org/>

It may be that the methodologies in one or more of the above more
closely match your desired behaviors than the others on the list.

You may also want to (re)view Brad Appleton's "The ACME Project
Assembling Configuration Mangaement Environments (for Software
Developement)" <URL:http://www.cmcrossroads.com/bradapp/acme/> as an
excellent source about SCM.

In my opinion, it is a bad idea to choose a system that does not already
do most of what you want to do. So, try to choose the best tool for the
job and you will likely be much happier than trying to force the wrong
tool to do the job you want.

        Enjoy!
        -- Mark