Customer Reviews

Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hunt and Thomas, "The Pragmatic Programmers", provide a delightfully brief user's guide for the Concurrent Version System (CVS). They focus on idiomatic usage patterns, leading the way from installing CVS and creating a first project to branching for releases and developer sandboxes. They provide practical advice on when to branch, how to comment, what constitutes a project, and even what to check into CVS in the first place. I've been using CVS for years, and learned a lot here; especially about the various kinds of diff reporting and configuration options.

Almost everyone is confused by CVS first. Almost everyone who gets over the learning curve swears by it (or some variant). The main adoption hurdle is the unix-style documentation that provides telegraphic explanations of commands in insider jargon. Hunt and Thomas explain what it all means, and more importantly, how to use it, and why to use it. Complex relationships like merge conflicts are illustrated with clear diagrams and sensible easy-to-follow examples. Even though I see myself using this book quite a bit, I could've used it even more when I was getting started, before CVS became second nature.

(The following is an excerpt of a review of "The Pragmatic Starter Kit" I posted at JavaRanch.)

Authors, David Thomas and Andrew Hunt, smashed a home run with their book, "Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS" - the first volume in the three part "The Pragmatic Starter Kit" series. Using easy to read explanations, examples and stories, this book clearly explains what version control is, how it works, why folks are using it, how CVS works, and what commands developers are using during the life of their projects. "Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS" provides the semantics and idioms behind the syntax found in the CVS Manual. Before reading this book, I was a timid CVS user, willing to do little more than check code out. Now, after reading the book, I check code out and in, branch, merge and resolve conflicts with confidence. I'd recommend this book to any developer using a version control system that wouldn't already describe themselves as Zen masters in the craft, and to any developer not already using a version control system.

I've been grappling with the Concurrent Versioning System (CVS) for years. Moreover, I've been misusing it. Baffled and intimidated by its cryptic syntax and concepts, I've missed out on the power of branching and tagging, and the way these tools can be used to clearly demarcate project releases and versions. Using CVS as little more than a safer place to keep code than a local hard drive and an easier way to pass code around than FTP, I and my teams have failed to benefit from version control's true purpose. Checking code into the mainline only, we've found ourselves holding off on writing or checking in new code while a release is underway, and being forced to add new, untested code to a stable past release in order to fix a bug.

CVS's documentation has never helped matters. The free online manuals (aka "The Fish Book", "The Cederqvist", etc.) are classics and miss no detail documenting CVS's complex and option-laden commands, but say little about what exactly to do with the commands in order to run a successful software project. Other commercial CVS books essentially have been longer-form rewrites of the original manuals. And through it all, CVS's syntax has remained complex and intimidating.

Along comes Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS. With clarity, brevity, and humor, its authors show that version control can and must be the centerpiece of any development process, and they show how to make the humble, aging CVS work as that centerpiece. Taking the successful 80/20 approach, they cover only the features necessary to support the important things in software project execution: maintaining separate versions, marking releases and bug fixes, merging fixes to an old release into the latest version, and even bonus topics like managing third-party code. They take an Occam's Razor to CVS's syntax, leaving you with a small, essential slice that's easy to remember and use. Alongside this syntax, the authors suggest idioms, naming conventions, and techniques. What you end up with is the bare bones of how to run a software project. You start to feel like you're not even using CVS - that you could be using any version control system. The syntax becomes secondary and the process takes center stage.

Here is a summary of their approach: (1) Develop on the mainline; (2) Branch only from the mainline, and only when you're ready to put out a release (or experiment with some great departure from the current codebase); (3) Tag the branch when the release is done; (4) Return to the branch to fix a post-release bug; (5) Tag the branch before and after the bug fix; (6) Merge the bug fix back into the mainline; (7) Get back to work on the mainline; (8) Go home at a reasonable hour. In between all these steps, part of your team can work on the latest version while others launch or patch a release. Old work will not impede new work; new work will not pollute old work. The authors put the "concurrent" back into "CVS."

That's the undergirding of a solid development process. All you need is a tiny subset of CVS's baffling syntax to do it. The book describes the subset.

Please understand that this is not a definitive CVS reference. The authors don't document anything unrelated to the process. Armed with the common sense gained from the Pragmatic book, you can go to the original docs and find what you want.

I read this book over a year ago, and have waited until now to review it. In that time, I've successfully implemented most of its practices in the team that I lead. We can pull down the code tree of any of our past releases in an instant, fix a bug, and redeploy, all without affecting current development efforts - or having those development efforts affect the old release. There's never a question as to which version of the code we're working on. We're safer, smarter, and faster. All it took was a 175 page book, a free version control system, and a bit of open-mindedness. If you're not already doing what this book shows you how to do, start now.

I bought this book to come up to speed on CVS for a new project and I had a mixed experience with it.

I like the author's simple examples. For example, using a short text list of colors as sample files instead of source code. These made it easy to focus on the author's intent without getting confused by the example.

However, I had a problem in that the book never really compared CVS to other tools. I have always used source control tools that locked other users out of a file when you edited it: RCS, Clearcase, etc. So I found myself flipping through the book trying to figure out how to do a "get" command. I wish there had been a section describing the CVS philosophy of letting everyone edit and only fixing the merges.

I found the author's chatty style to be distracting. But, on the other hand, I am now successfully using CVS from using this book. So 3 stars.

I read this book cover-to-cover in two days. Don't mistake this as the book being lightweight. This book captures the essentials for using CVS in small, medium, and large projects. I've used CVS since 1997 in various aspects. In my experience, the authors present material that I've learned over the last eight years in an easy-to-read and easy-to-digest format. They touch on the basics, but the basics are really all many organizations need. I have been involved with projects where complex branching and tagging schemes were devised, which makes it hard to focus on actually writing code; you spend too much time dealing with bookkeeping, etc. The authors provide a no-nonsense way of using branches and tags that makes sense and is easy to grasp. This book is no replacement for some of the other CVS books out there that tend to focus on all aspects of CVS (administartion, coding, etc.) but if all you want is a great introduction to 97% of what you need to know as a developer, then get this book!

I had already started trying to use CVS (on OpenBSD) and had run into problems. Reading this book flattened out the CVS learning curve. It showed me how to perform CVS-related tasks that come up frequently, and helped me comprehend why I had previously been having trouble. I read most of the book in one day. Definitely a keeper!

If you are new to a particular topic and there is a Pragmatic Bookshelf edition for it, then I wholeheartedly recommend buying a copy before you buy any alternate version. They are generally well written, up-to-date and tell you just the stuff that you really need to know. This book is exactly that. There is a lot of information and books around on CVS version control tool but this is the one that well get you going the quickest.

With this book at my side I still ended up frequently hunting for information out on the web. CVS looks at the entire concept quite a bit differently than the other SCMs I've used and the command line interface is archaic. This book fails to provide a good conceptual model of what is going on in CVS (as opposed to SCMs in general) which might be able to allow using CVS without resorting to a purely cookbook approach.

The book only briefly deals with the GUI interfaces that might be an improvement over the command-line approach. Those that they do mention are Windows only.

This is a first-rate introduction to CVS. In fact, it may be that everything you ever need to know about CVS is in this book. This book covers version control basics, paradigm differences, branches, merging, and all of the 'basic' version control tools. It then provides 'recipes' (boiler plate) for common operations to simplify things. This book has perhaps two shortcomings: first, it doesn't cover all of the features of CVS. The authors can be forgiven for stating their prejudices, particularly since they coincide with mine, but I think completeness is worth something so ignoring the features that are deemed of less worth is probably not the best. Second, this book doesn't cover the GUI interfaces. The GUI's should be easy to figure out, and the command line is certainly where it's at for scripting, but I think there are a lot of folks who would like at least a WinCVS appendix. Overall, very recommended, but it won't make you a *complete* CVS guru.

Not sure what I'm missing. These books are thin in more than the physical way. This one has a few decent ideas. Actually, my big beefs with this book are:

1. Most of this information is just freely available. Look at this as a search prevention mechanism.

2. If you use a tool with great CVS support (like Eclipse 3), literally 2/3 of the book is completely superfluous.

3. If you don't use a tool w/great support, get that for free, not this, you'll end up much farther down the road.

Why not put ideas into a book like this? For instance, Vincent Massol's recent article about automating a process of publishing diffs to keep people up to date. Or looking at some of the many interesting OS addons like CVSList. This is literally just one more book that sells you something you already have ready access to.