Is CVS in Windows Vista Best Practices?
I need to start using CVS at my new company so that I can play well with the developers who are all * nix users. I happen to be a Windows Vista user and unfortunately don't have the option to switch anytime soon. I'm not exactly a command line guru either, so any simplified method works fine for me.
I discovered TortoiseCVS today and it looks pretty straight forward, although it says it is not directly supported on Vista, which worries me a bit.
My questions:
- Are you using CVS on Windows (Vista)?
- What method are you using? (Tortoise CVS? Another option?)
- Is your method compatible with repository installations on * nix machines?
- Any other tips for a noob? (Thank)
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I know many people who needed a quiet introduction to cvs and ended up using WinCVS without any real difficulty. I know many others who use the cvs client in Eclipse. This usage includes projects that are not otherwise managed by Eclipse. As for me, I stick to the command line myself because I feel that the lack of GUI abstractions helps me always understand exactly what CVS is doing. All three solutions work well on Vista, 32 and 64 bit. Our store uses Mac, Linux, Solaris and Windows with a server on a Linux machine and we have never had any compatibility issues.
One problem you should be aware of regardless of your choice of cvs client for cross platform goodness. Most cvs clients by default convert between Unix newlines (on the server) and Windows newlines (on the client). You must understand that this transformation is taking place and be aware of the consequences.
- This conversion will cause real problems if you try to commit a file with new Unix lines. Thus, you need to avoid, for example, copying files from the Unix repository to a Windows window, editing and committing them, unless you have done a newline conversion. We had some real problems with this in my store, and I had a strict policy that people should only transfer files between machines by transferring them to CVS. Never, for example, by email, shared network directories, etc.
- If your CVS repository has any binaries, some may be incorrectly labeled as binaries. In a * nix-only store, no one would notice, as the binary flag won't affect most binaries. But on a cross platform store, the binary flag usually affects how cvs handles files as it will disable any newline conversion attempts. Generally, any file that was uploaded from a Unix window will be properly represented in the repository, so you can fix the problem at the end of Windows simply by changing the tag and re-updating it. I.e.,
cvs admin -kb file
cvs update -A file
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There are several other possibilities you can take to interact with your * nix bretheren.
- Install VirtualBox and Linux distribution so you can run the same toolbox.
- Install VirtualBox and a copy of Windows XP known to work with TortoiseCVS.
You can find VMWare devices pre-loaded with a linux distribution that can be imported into VMWare Player or VirtualBox. From there, you just need to connect to the shared drive the same way they do.
Please note that CVS is no longer supported. You should really be moving to SVN, git, or some other source control system.
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