summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/doc/tdevelop/cvs.docbook
blob: 116e24f642630450690f610db9824b3fcd836c9b (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
<chapter id="cvs">
<title>Using &CVS;</title>
<indexterm zone="cvs"><primary>CVS</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm zone="cvs"><primary>revision control</primary></indexterm>

<sect1 id="cvs-basics">
<title>&CVS; Basics</title>

<para>
&CVS; is the revision control system which many open source projects -
including &kde; &mdash; are using. It stores all sources codes in a central place,
called the <emphasis>repository</emphasis>.  From the repository, developers
can check out a current version of the project or snapshots of it at arbitrary
points of time. In contrast to some other revision control systems, it is not
necessary to <emphasis>lock</emphasis> files one wants to work on. So
development can be highly parallelized.
</para>

<para>
Whenever a developer has finished a task, he <emphasis>commits</emphasis> his
code (accompanied by a log message). &CVS; takes the job to merge the changes
made by several developers. It can of course happen that developers work on
the same piece of code, resulting in a conflicting set of changes (in practice
this occurs seldom, and is often a sign of a lack of communication). In this
case &CVS; rejects a commit; only after all conflicts are resolved, a file can
be committed.
</para>

<para>
So far, this has been a description of the basic features of &CVS; one usually
has to cope with. But &CVS; can provide a lot more: One can  maintain several
branches of a project (&eg; &kde; 1.1.2 and &kde; 2 were branches in &kde;'s
development tree), merge changes from one branch to another, ask for
differences between revisions, the revision history of files &etc;
</para>

<para>
&CVS; is implemented as a client-server system. As a user, all communication
with the repository goes through the command line program &cvs;. A higher
level user interface is available through frontends like &cervisia; (<ulink
url="http://cervisia.sf.net"/>) or <application>TkCVS</application> (<ulink
url="http://tkcvs.sf.net"/>).  In &tdevelop;, only a small part of the &cvs;
functionality which is important for your daily work can be used directly.
</para>

<para>
Basic knowledge of &CVS; usage is assumed. In particular, you should know
how to checkout a given project from the repository. We recommend the
book <quote>Open Source Development With &CVS;</quote> by Karl Fogel which is freely
distributed (except for the non-technical chapters). See
<ulink url="http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/cvsbook.html"/>.
</para>

</sect1> <!-- cvs-basics -->

<!-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -->

<sect1 id="cvs-commands">
<title>&CVS; Commands in &tdevelop;</title>

<para>
In the file views, the following context menu items are available:
</para>

<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>Add to Repository</term>
<listitem>
<para>Prepares the marked file for addition to the repository. The file
is transferred to the repository when you commit it (or the containing
directory) the next time.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>

<varlistentry>
<term>Remove from Repository</term>
<listitem>
<para>
Prepares a file for removal from the repository. This also deletes
the file on the local file system, so use this feature with care!
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>

<varlistentry>
<term>Update</term>
<listitem>
<para>
Runs <command>cvs update</command> to merge any changes from other
users into your working directory. When you use this menu item over
a directory, the update normally happens recursively, except if you
have disabled this in the configuration file <filename>.cvsrc</filename>.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>

<varlistentry>
<term>Commit</term>
<listitem>
<para>
Runs <command>cvs commit</command> to upload any locally made changes
to the repository. Note that you should update before doing this.
Otherwise, when another user has committed his own changes before,
&CVS; may give you an error message.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>

<para>
All these commands are invoked as subprocesses by &tdevelop; without any
further command line options or environment variables. This may be a
problem when the connection with the &CVS; server goes through a
&ssh; connection and requires that you enter your password each time
you commit or update. This is for instance necessary when your project is
hosted on <filename>sourceforge.net</filename>. Workarounds for this
problem are described on the &CVS;/SSH FAQ which you can find in the
SourceForge documentation.
</para>

</sect1> <!-- cvs-basics -->

<!-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -->

<sect1 id="cvs-behind">
<title>Behind the Scenes</title>

<sect2 id="cvs-behind-workdir">
<title>What &CVS; Records in the Working Directory</title>

<para>
(... to be written ...)
</para>
</sect2> <!-- cvs-behind-workdir -->

</sect1> <!-- cvs-behind -->

</chapter> <!-- cvs -->