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(cvsbook.info)A Day With CVS

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A Day With CVS
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This section describes some basic CVS operations, then follows with a
sample session covering typical CVS usage.  As the guided tour
progresses, we'll also start to look at how CVS works internally.

Although you don't need to understand every last detail of CVS's
implementation to use it, a basic knowledge of how it works is
invaluable in choosing the best way to achieve a given result.  CVS is
more like a bicycle than an automobile, in the sense that its mechanisms
are entirely transparent to anyone who cares to look.  As with a
bicycle, you can just hop on and start riding immediately.  However, if
you take a few moments to study how the gears work, you'll be able to
ride it much more efficiently.  (In the case of CVS, I'm not sure
whether transparency was a deliberate design decision or an accident,
but it does seem to be a property shared by many free programs.
Externally visible implementations have the advantage of encouraging the
users to become contributing developers by exposing them to the system's
inner workings right from the start.)

Each part of the tour may make use of knowledge introduced in previous
parts.  Therefore, if this is your first time, I recommend that you
simply start at the beginning and take the tour sequentially, without
skipping over anything.  The menu below is merely meant as a convenience
for repeat visitors - you shouldn't use it to jump directly to a
section that interests you unless you're already familiar with the
material in the previous sections.

Conventions Used In This Tour

Invoking CVS

Accessing A Repository

Starting A New Project

Checking Out A Working Copy

Version Versus Revision

Making A Change

Finding Out What You (And Others) Did -- update And diff

CVS And Implied Arguments

Committing

Revision Numbers

Detecting And Resolving Conflicts

Finding Out Who Did What (Browsing Log Messages)

Examining And Reverting Changes

The Slow Method Of Reverting

The Fast Method Of Reverting