Best cvs windows client

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. We're currently using WinCVS but it's slow and has no merge dialog. I'm looking for something like Eclipse's Team Synchronize so people can see what they'll get before they update. What do you suggest? I also think it would be a good idea to learn how to do some operations with the command line too.

First: Strictly speaking, none of the tools quoted here so far are CVS clients. So, I'd be interested to hear what particular operations you think are slow in WinCvs. The real bottleneck is usually the CVS protocol itself and that will behave the same regardless of which GUI frontend you use. Also, what exactly do you mean by "has no merge dialog"? WinCvs integrates nicely with WinMerge also as conflict editor. And if you were talking about executing Merge operations you use the Update command which has a "Merge options" tab For previewing updates there are also several approaches in WinCvs: If you just want to see which files would get updated you can use the Query Update command cvs -n up or if you want the details you can simply Diff using WinMerge against HEAD also works on multiple files and folders.

I've had both Tortoise and WinCvs installed for years but usually find that I do not use Tortoise except when I feel guilty about not getting what all the fuss is about CVS is unable to extract a file by its version number. Instead, it must be done using what is known as a tag.

When indexing a CVS-based system, you must ensure that all changes are checked into the repository and then apply a tag using the "cvs tag" command. Then, when indexing the file, make certain you use the "label" command-line parameter to specify the tag that you want to associate with the build you are indexing.

Other values can be set from the environment or the command line. Use the -?? Keeping track of versions and history is key, and it would be nice to have the option to lock out other developers from files if necessary, and also to save a change or a bug fix as a unit of files, for ease of deployment.

What say you? Hard to disagree with Tim Eckel more. Setting up GIT and learning a few commands is not a hard thing. The project can grow without having to constantly develop a system to maintain code versioning. Why not list the other option, no version control system at all? I create my own versioning backup system and via the cloud update all my development systems in real time. The advantage is that everything is automated and runs in the background.

I can honestly not think of a reason why I would use any of the version control platforms listed in this article. Then look at Sparkleshare. It works like Dropbox, using Git under the cover. In our case, we are using Hg and we would not be able to work without it or Git, it does the same stuff.

We are constantly merging branches and clones, and our merges often imply more than files. Some are trying with SVN or worst , and they spend weeks doing merges. Even alone, I do use Hg, it allows me to work in branche, separate my change efficiently, work on parallel tasks and then merge it easily. It also makes me save a lot of time because I can find traces of change I made months ago very quickly and take actions if needed. I would not switch it for SVN, ever, which as you said is often a loss of time, and I will not switch to a non controlled version system.

But now I use SVN. Even for a single user working on tiny projects, it has distinct advantages. It keeps the entire history of the project, not just one or two previous versions. It keeps log messages with every updates so I can go back and see what I did.

If I see a problem, I can easily compare to earlier versions to see where the bug was introduced. When it worked out, I merged it back into trunk.

I find it adds very little effort to use. This is crazy. SVN has no significant advantages over Hg or Git, regardless of team size. There are a number of solutions out there, and you need to do definitive feature comparison so you can decide the best solution that is best for you. I use Git both at work and for personal rjepocts.

Its superior branch merging and local branching capability are great advantages over Subversion. Git is very powerful but as a result has lots and lots of commands, options and features that are confusing and unnecessary for everyday use. However I found that once you learn how to do the basics, you can get by perfectly fine. There is absolutely no need to set up server or such a thing. Possibly "destructive" features or "destructive power" as you call it are not turned on by default so that no data is lost by default.

Start working. Mercurial exposes a clean public Python API, thus many features in Mercurial are moved out to optional extensions in order to keep the core set of commands clean. I use it on my Ubuntu However, some purists actually shy away from gui-fied SVN clients and use the terminal client instead since it offers much more scripting flexibility and what not. Not necessary to talk about CVS, I think, it is a dinosaur. One of its big disadvantage — it does not allow to version folders directories.

Good enough for small teams. Latest XCode 4. Very interesting to try git, to learn something new and because it better work with branches as people say. Also it has good clients for all platforms. Also I like that it stores meta information only in root folder, unlike svn has. Also it is very good that git is faster — critical for big projects. Also need to mention following clients: TortoiseGit — open source client for Windows. GitX SmartGit — commercial. Your email address will not be published.

Rob Rawson. Get more stuff like this In your Inbox Subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff on remote working and productivity to your email inbox. Vikas says:. March 11, at am. Shayne says:. September 9, at am. November 13, at am. Paul says:. Now this product is more to my liking especially after looking at the other options. It works well with my CVS repositories and I like the concept of opening a sandbox to get a hierarchical view of the files.

I also really liked how the hierarchical view automatically refreshed to reflect the most recent changes to the sandbox area and files within the sandbox. I prefer the split window approach when viewing differences between files.

SmartCVS as a very clean, modern looking user interface. It provides different views of the sandbox. It allows me to easily checkout specific modules instead of the complete repository.