Essential CVS (Essentials) [Paperback]

Jennifer Vesperman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0596527039 | ISBN-13: 978-0596527037 | Publication Date: November 27, 2006 | Edition: Second Edition

This easy-to-follow reference shows a variety of professionals how to use the Concurrent Versions System (CVS), the open source tool that lets you manage versions of anything stored in files. Ideal for software developers tracking different versions of the same code, this new edition has been expanded to explain common usages of CVS for system administrators, project managers, software architects, user-interface (UI) specialists, graphic designers and others.

Current for version 1.12, Essential CVS, 2nd Edition offers an overview of CVS, explains the core concepts, and describes the commands that most people use on a day-to-day basis. For those who need to get up to speed rapidly, the book's Quickstart Guide shows you how to build and use a basic CVS repository with the default settings and a minimum of extras. You'll also find:

• A full command reference that details all aspects of customizing CVS for automation, logging, branching, merging documents, and creating alerts
• Examples and descriptions of the most commonly used options for each command
• Why and when to tag or branch your project, tagging before releases, and using branching to create a bugfix version of a project
• Details on the systems used in CVS to permit multiple developers to work on the same project without loss of data

An entire section devoted to document version management and project management includes ways to import and export projects, work with remote repositories, and shows how to fix things that can go wrong when using CVS. You'll find more screenshots in this edition as well as examples of using graphical CVS clients to run CVS commands. Essential CVS also includes a FAQ that answers common queries in the CVS mailing list to get you up and running with this system quickly and painlessly.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Essential CVS does what you might think would be a small job more effectively and more comprehensively than I would have imagined, even allowing for the generally high standard of O'Reilly books. Apart from covering the boring stuff well, it has two big advantages over the Web: it backs up its discussion of various CVS functions with wise advice and policies on why and how to use these facilities - plus it provides readable (and, presumably, tested) examples. Computing sciences prizes abstraction and generalities; computing practice should, like this book, be informed by concrete specifics and sensible rules-of-thumb." - Damian Counsell, news@UK, December 2003 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Jennifer Vesperman is the author of Essential CVS. She writes for the O'Reilly Network, the Linux Documentation Project, and occasionally Linux.Com. As a programmer and system administrator, she currently works with Cybersource, an Australian IT consulting firm. She is the current Coordinator for LinuxChix, an advocacy and support group that focuses on women who use and develop open source programs (especially Linux).

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; Second Edition edition (November 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596527039
• ISBN-13: 978-0596527037
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #979,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm one of those people the female 'geek stereotype' was based on - you can see people like me in characters like Evelyn from "The Mummy" and Jo from "Twister". Like them, I can be so immersed in what I'm studying that I ignore what's happening around me, in favour of what I'm learning.
My mother constantly tells the story of the time I got locked in the school library because I was so quiet the librarian didn't notice me.

At other times, I multiprocess. As I write this, I'm sending emails to my editor about the second edition of 'Essential CVS', communicating online to friends, and cooking a big batch of soup.

My field of expertise is computing in general, Unix/Linux in specific, and within that I'm more eclectic - I'm one of those computer people who generalises more than specialises.
My secondary field of expertise, and one which is rapidly overtaking my primary field, is translating from 'geek' into a more ordinary English.

My other interests include practical geeking: home repair and furniture making, garden design and development, sewing, cooking, and developing solutions to problems I encounter in my everyday life.

A minor ambition in my life is to develop a better bra. It's a really interesting engineering problem, actually.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great start to CVS, March 26, 2004

By 

Matthew Hunter "Technology Geek" (Blacksburg, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Essential CVS (Paperback)

I administer our CVS server at work. We use CVS in the traditional way, to manage source code from a group of people working together on multiple projects. Before this book, I didn't have a single reference that explained all the basic functionality of CVS. Now, when someone has a question, I can pass along this book for a quick answer.

Most of the things you'll do with CVS are covered in sufficient detail in this book. I do agree with the reviewer who mentioned this is not the perfect reference for some tasks - like merging branches. This book will, however, give you all the background information you'll need so that you can effectively research complex topics like this on the web. The title is appropriate - 'essential CVS.' It's not 'everything there is to know about CVS' - and that's a strength of the book. It makes it small enough that the average developer can read the 'quickstart,' and have a basic understanding of how things work. They can then use the more detailed chapters to gain further information. Only the CVS administrator will need a little more. Even for them, this book will be a handy reference.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An effective coverage of CVS, December 7, 2003

By 

Foti Massimo (Vezia (Switzerland)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Essential CVS (Paperback)

Being part of the "Essential" series, this book doesn't pretend to be the ultimate reference on the subject, but it delivers an effective coverage of CVS. The author start from scratch and goes up to explain more advanced features like tagging and branching. In my opinion the way chapters are organized is not ideal and there is some redundancy here and there, notwithstanding these shortcomings, I would recommend it. Just be advised the whole book is totally Unix centric and all the samples cover only command-line usage.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Clear on the Merging Branches, February 10, 2004

By 

Samuel Smith "Sammy" (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Essential CVS (Paperback)

For me the quick way to review a CVS book is to read it's sections on merging branches. It was covered in about two pages in this book and wholely inadequate.

For a general CVS admin reference, it seems OK, but I was too disappointed regarding branches. My quest for a great CVS book continues....