3 Copyright (c) 1993-1994 Brian Berliner
4 Copyright (c) 1992 Brian Berliner and Jeff Polk
5 Copyright (c) 1989-1992, Brian Berliner
8 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
9 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
10 the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option)
13 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
14 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
15 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
16 GNU General Public License for more details.
18 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
22 If you have problems or think you have found a bug in CVS, see the
23 section BUGS in the CVS manual (also known as Version Management with
24 CVS by Per Cederqvist et al, or cvs.texinfo--see below for details).
26 If you are thinking of submitting changes to CVS, see the
29 Please consult the INSTALL file for information on tested
30 configurations. If you have a comment about an already tested
31 configuration, or have tried CVS on a new configuration, please let us
32 know as described in INSTALL. Free software only works if we all help
35 Finally, we cannot guarantee that this release will not completely wipe out
36 all of your work from your system. We do some simple testing before each
37 release, but you are completely on your own. We recommend testing this
38 release on a source repository that is not critical to your work. THIS
39 SOFTWARE IS SUPPLIED COMPLETELY "AS IS". NO WARRANTY....
41 Thanks for your support!
45 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
49 CVS is a version control system, which allows you to keep old versions
50 of files (usually source code), keep a log of who, when, and why
51 changes occurred, etc., like RCS or SCCS. It handles multiple
52 developers, multiple directories, triggers to enable/log/control
53 various operations, and can work over a wide area network. The
54 following tasks are not included; they can be done in conjunction with
55 CVS but will tend to require some script-writing and software other
56 than CVS: bug-tracking, build management (that is, make and make-like
57 tools), and automated testing.
59 And a whole lot more. See the manual for more information.
61 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
63 Notes to people upgrading from a previous release of CVS:
65 See the NEWS file for a description of features new in this version.
67 See the Compatibility section of the manual for information on
68 compatibility between CVS versions. The quick summary is that as long
69 as you not using the optional watch features, there are no
70 compatibility problems with CVS 1.5 or later.
72 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
76 Please read the INSTALL file for installation instructions. Brief summary:
80 (run the regression tests if desired)
82 (create a repository if you don't already have one)
84 The documentation is in the doc subdirectory. cvs.texinfo is the main
85 manual; cvs.info* and cvs.ps are the info and postscript versions,
86 respectively, generated from cvs.texinfo. The postscript version is
87 for US letter size paper; we do this not because we consider this size
88 "better" than A4, but because we believe that the US letter version
89 will print better on A4 paper than the other way around. If you want a
90 version formatted for A4, add the line @afourpaper near the start of
91 cvs.texinfo and re-generate cvs.ps using TeX.
93 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
95 * How do I get up-to-date information and information about other
98 On the web, http://www.loria.fr/~molli/cvs-index.html.
101 http://www.cvshome.org
103 The mailing list for CVS is info-cvs@gnu.org. Send
104 subscription and removal requests for that list to
105 info-cvs-request@gnu.org.
107 The newsgroup for CVS (and other configuration management systems) is
108 comp.software.config-mgmt. There is not yet a CVS-specific newsgroup,
109 but perhaps if comp.software.config-mgmt gets enough CVS discussion,
110 then it will be possible to create one.
112 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
116 The conflict-resolution algorithms and much of the administrative file
117 definitions of CVS were based on the original package written by Dick Grune
118 at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam <dick@cs.vu.nl>, and posted to
119 comp.sources.unix in the volume 6 release sometime in 1986. This original
120 version was a collection of shell scripts. I am thankful that Dick made
123 Brian Berliner from Prisma, Inc. (now at Sun Microsystems, Inc.)
124 <berliner@sun.com> converted the original CVS shell scripts into reasonably
125 fast C and added many, many features to support software release control
126 functions. See the manual page in the "man" directory. A copy of the
127 USENIX article presented at the Winter 1990 USENIX Conference, Washington
128 D.C., is included in the "doc" directory.
130 Jeff Polk from BSDI <polk@bsdi.com> converted the CVS 1.2
131 sources into much more readable and maintainable C code. He also added a
132 whole lot of functionality and modularity to the code in the process.
133 See the bottom of the NEWS file (from about 1992).
135 david d `zoo' zuhn <zoo@armadillo.com> contributed the working base code
136 for CVS 1.4 Alpha. His work carries on from work done by K. Richard Pixley
137 and others at Cygnus Support. The CVS 1.4 upgrade is due in large part to
140 David G. Grubbs <dgg@odi.com> contributed the CVS "history" and "release"
141 commands. As well as the ever-so-useful "-n" option of CVS which tells CVS
142 to show what it would do, without actually doing it. He also contributed
143 support for the .cvsignore file.
145 The Free Software Foundation (GNU) contributed most of the portability
146 framework that CVS now uses. This can be found in the "configure" script,
147 the Makefile's, and basically most of the "lib" directory.
149 K. Richard Pixley, Cygnus Support <rich@cygnus.com> contributed many bug
150 fixes/enhancement as well as completing early reviews of the CVS 1.3 manual
153 Roland Pesch, then of Cygnus Support <roland@wrs.com> contributed
154 brand new cvs(1) and cvs(5) manual pages. Thanks to him for saving us
155 from poor use of our language!
157 Paul Sander, HaL Computer Systems, Inc. <paul@hal.com> wrote and
158 contributed the code in lib/sighandle.c. I added support for POSIX, BSD,
159 and non-POSIX/non-BSD systems.
161 Jim Kingdon and others at Cygnus Support <info@cygnus.com> wrote the
162 remote repository access code.
164 There have been many, many contributions not listed here. Consult the
165 ChangeLog files in each directory for a more complete idea.
167 In addition to the above contributors, the following Beta testers
168 deserve special mention for their support. This is only a partial
169 list; if you have helped in this way and would like to be listed, let
170 bug-cvs know (as described in the Cederqvist manual).
172 Mark D. Baushke <mdb@cisco.com>
173 Per Cederqvist <ceder@signum.se>
174 J.T. Conklin <jtc@cygnus.com>
175 Vince DeMarco <vdemarco@fdcsrvr.cs.mci.com>
176 Paul Eggert <eggert@twinsun.com>
177 Lal George <george@research.att.com>
178 Dean E. Hardi <Dean.E.Hardi@ccmail.jpl.nasa.gov>
179 Mike Heath <mike@pencom.com>
180 Jim Kingdon <kingdon@cygnus.com>
181 Bernd Leibing <bernd.leibing@rz.uni-ulm.de>
182 Benedict Lofstedt <benedict@tusc.com.au>
183 Dave Love <d.love@dl.ac.uk>
184 Robert Lupton the Good <rhl@astro.princeton.edu>
185 Tom McAliney <tom@hilco.com>
186 Eberhard Mattes <mattes@azu.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de>
187 Jim Meyering <meyering@comco.com>
188 Thomas Mohr <mohr@lts.sel.alcatel.de>
189 Thomas Nilsson <thoni@softlab.se>
190 Raye Raskin <raye.raskin@lia.com>
191 Harlan Stenn <harlan@landmark.com>
192 Gunnar Tornblom <gunnar.tornblom@senet.abb.se>
193 Greg A. Woods <woods@planix.com>
195 Many contributors have added code to the "contrib" directory. See the
196 README file there for a list of what is available. There is also a
197 contributed GNU Emacs CVS-mode in tools/pcl-cvs.