Home

 

CVS features

Some of the main features of CVS are as follows:

Multiple client-server protocols over TCP/IP, a feature that allows developers access to the latest code from a wide variety of clients located anywhere with access to the CVS server.

All the versions of a file are stored in a single repository file using forward-delta versioning, which stores only the differences between sequential versions.

Developers are insulated from each other. Every developer works in their own directory, and CVS merges the work in the repository when they are ready to commit. Conflicts can be resolved as development progresses (using synchronize) and must be resolved before any piece of work is committed to the repository.

Important: CVS and Application Developer have a slightly different interpretation of what the term conflict means:

In CVS, a conflict means that two changes have been made to the same line or set of lines in the same source code file. In these cases an automatic merge is not possible and some manual merging is required.

For RAD v7.5, a conflict means only that there exists a locally modified version of a resource for which a more recent revision is available in the branch in the repository. In these cases an automatic merge might resolve the issue, or if there are changes to the same set of lines then (as is the case for resolving CVS conflicts), manual merging is required.

CVS uses an unreserved checkout approach to version control that helps avoid artificial conflicts common when using an exclusive checkout model.

CVS keeps shared project data in repositories. Each repository has a root directory on the file system.

CVS maintains a history of the source code revisions. Each change is stamped with the time it was made and the user name of the person who made it. We recommend that developers also provide a description of the change. Given this information, CVS can help developers find answers to questions such as: Who made the change, when was it made, the reasons why, and what specifically was changed.
ibm.com/redbooks