Open Source Development with CVS: Learn How to Work With Open Source Software [Paperback]

Karl Franz Fogel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 25, 1999

Open Source Development with CVS is one of the first books available that discusses the development and implementation of Open Source software. In this book you will find a complete introduction, tutorial, and reference to the Concurrent Versions System (CVS), along with a detailed survey of the systems and conventions of Open Source development, and how CVS fits into them. If you just begun exploring Open Source software, this book will answer many of your questions; if you're an old hand, it will provide a convenient guide to the most widely used revision control system in the free software world today.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The need for a modern source-code management strategy in the distributed open-source community is paramount. The benevolent dictatorship model of open-source maintainers is only quasi-stable, but it is far better than the other extreme: the chaos of democratic code development.

The best available compromise is the concurrent versioning system (CVS), which introduces proctored code merging into source code management. CVS is ideally suited for worldwide open-source development, and the world is ready for monographs that address the management issues that Per Cederqvist explicitly avoided in his fine 164-page postscript manual distributed with the CVS tar-ball. What is the role of a maintainer/manager in establishing test protocols for code merges? What minimal functional level of developer communications is necessary for merges to remain stable? Is a maintainer-less release possible?

These questions go largely unanswered in Karl Fogel's new Open Source Development with CVS. Fogel's 300-page book consists of chapters alternating between CVS basics and common code maintenance issues. He includes a few anecdotes from open-source lore and lots of nonspecific commonsense guidelines on team software development.

Fogel is at his best when he is engaging us in thinking about what should and should not be under CVS control. He points out that complex relationships exist between developing code and its dependencies on intimately related applications, such as build tools themselves (gcc, autoconf) or partner applications (e.g., the server's client or the client's server). His brief discussion of strategies is too short to be satisfying.

Frustratingly, this book is chock-full of postmodern self-indulgences, such as his boasting reverence for technological ignorance. The discipline needed by good maintainers is missing here; Fogel's informal prose is often grating, and his copious parenthetical remarks are distracting or bullying (they sure are); one wonders where his editor was. Ultimately, his management arguments boil down to an endorsement for the benevolent dictatorship model--a safe conclusion, but one that seems not to use CVS's merging capability for all it's worth. To the question of how to run a project, he responds, "Well, we're all still trying to figure that out, actually." True, and he isn't there yet, but at least he has the questions right. --Peter Leopold

About the Author

Karl Fogel (Chicago, IL) co-founded Cyclic Software in 1995. He now works as a programmer in Chicago, IL and is a member of the CVS development team.

Product Details

• Paperback: 316 pages
• Publisher: Coriolis Group Books; 1st edition (October 25, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576104907
• ISBN-13: 978-1576104903
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,261,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, December 5, 1999

By 

R. Hiller (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Open Source Development with CVS: Learn How to Work With Open Source Software (Paperback)

I've been using CVS for a couple of years, read the manual and had great success. However, there have been lots of gaps in my understanding and places where I wasn't really sure what was happenning. This book answered those. It has lots of well chosen examples that illustrate points that I've wondered about, but been afraid to try out for fear of really messing up my CVS repository.

The book is a little heavy on the "Open Source" religion, but dismissing it because of that would be a big mistake. This is a fine book.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent, invaluable, not enough about permissions, August 20, 2001

By 

Robert Nagle "idiotprogrammer" (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Open Source Development with CVS: Learn How to Work With Open Source Software (Paperback)

Open Source Development with CVS Karl Fogel

Here is a chatty discussion of CVS and how to use it. The best thing about the book is that he spends a lot of time discussing his examples. That helps you to understand the output. I also found the troubeshooting section to be more than adequate, and a discussion of pcl-cvs (the plugin to emacs) to be a nice and helpful addition.

Fogel wrote some chapters about open source development. Call them filler or distractions, still it gives insight about how version control management contributes to open source. . The book has an appendix of descriptions of each command and at times Fogel urges the reader to refer to the Cederqvist manual. I actually appreciated that because it allowed Fogel to write about the things not already found in the online manual.

One quibble was with the organization of the book. To learn how to setup CVS from scratch, you need to start by reading chapter 4 (Admin), and then go back and reread chapter 2 (An overview). Maybe a briefer overview would have been better and an explanation of the functions in succeeding chapters.

The chattiness of the chapters (which is a good thing) often made it hard to find the user commands. Perhaps user input could have been highlighted in some way. Also, the discussion of file permissions was simply inadequate. Indeed, chapter 4 contained an error related to permissions on page 112 (what does "+R" mean? ) and didn't discuss sticky bits for group ownership. This was significant, because I couldn't proceed with learning CVS until I could figure out those permissions.

In short: an excellent, invaluable book, but you should consult the Cederqvist manual for the section of file permissions.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not only technical, but also community info..., February 27, 2001

By 

John P. Hoke "Drinking at the Foo B@r" (Floral Park, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Open Source Development with CVS: Learn How to Work With Open Source Software (Paperback)

I found this book a joy to read. Before ordering this book, I had read the GPL'd chapters online and found them to be quite good so I wanted to support the author with my wallet. I figgured the rest would be the regular pomp about Open Source that we are seeing alot of lately, but I could not have been more incorrect! The author not only knows his technical details about the CVS system, he fully groks the Open Source movement, personalities and community.

The author alternates chapters between community issues (ethics, forking, project maintenance and administration, as well as "people skills") and the technical nuts and bolts of running a CVS server and/or using a CVS client.

While the title touts the Open Source movement, CVS is just as at home in a closed environment, say a web development team, inhouse application development, or anywhere else that you need to track text based files. Mr. Fogel does a good job of showing run of the mill examples and code, as well as some more esoteric uses of CVS commands and utilities.

If you are doing any sort of development and are investigating content version control software this book (and application) are for you.