New York University Faculty of Arts and Science College of Arts and Science Graduate School of Arts and Science

Computing Resources

cvs (version 1.12.12)

CVS is the Concurrent Versions System, an open-source network-transparent version control system.

Its client-server access method lets developers access the latest code from anywhere there's an Internet connection. Its unreserved check-out model to version control avoids artificial conflicts common with the exclusive check-out model. Its client tools are available on most platforms.

CVS allows you to keep old versions of files (usually source code), keep a log of who, when, and why changes occurred, etc., like RCS or SCCS. Unlike the simpler systems, CVS does not just operate on one file at a time or one directory at a time, but operates on hierarchical collections of directories consisting of ver- sion controlled files. CVS helps to manage releases and to control the concurrent editing of source files among multi- ple authors. CVS allows triggers to enable/log/control various operations and works well over a wide area network.

cvs keeps a single copy of the master sources. This copy is called the source ``repository''; it contains all the infor- mation to permit extracting previous software releases at any time based on either a symbolic revision tag, or a date in the past.

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