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Next: [[cvs: What is CVS not?#What is CVS not?|What is CVS not?]], Up: [[cvs: Overview#Overview|Overview]] &nbsp; |[[cvs: Index#SEC_Contents|Contents]]||[[cvs: Index#Index|Index]]|</p>
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=== What is CVS? ===
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<small>CVS</small> is a version control system.  Using it, you can
record the history of your source files.


For example, bugs sometimes creep in when
software is modified, and you might not detect the bug
until a long time after you make the modification.
With <small>CVS</small>, you can easily retrieve old versions to see
exactly which change caused the bug.  This can
sometimes be a big help.

You could of course save every version of every file
you have ever created.  This would
however waste an enormous amount of disk space.  <small>CVS</small>
stores all the versions of a file in a single file in a
clever way that only stores the differences between
versions.

<small>CVS</small> also helps you if you are part of a group of people working
on the same project.  It is all too easy to overwrite
each others&rsquo; changes unless you are extremely careful.
Some editors, like <small>GNU</small> Emacs, try to make sure that
the same file is never modified by two people at the
same time.  Unfortunately, if someone is using another
editor, that safeguard will not work.  <small>CVS</small> solves this problem
by insulating the different developers from each other.  Every
developer works in his own directory, and <small>CVS</small> merges
the work when each developer is done.

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<div id="index-CVS_002c-history-of"></div>
<div id="index-Credits-_0028CVS-program_0029"></div>
<div id="index-Contributors-_0028CVS-program_0029"></div>
<small>CVS</small> started out as a bunch of shell scripts written by
Dick Grune, posted to the newsgroup
<code>comp.sources.unix</code> in the volume 6
release of July, 1986.  While no actual code from
these shell scripts is present in the current version
of <small>CVS</small> much of the <small>CVS</small> conflict resolution algorithms
come from them.

In April, 1989, Brian Berliner designed and coded <small>CVS</small>.
Jeff Polk later helped Brian with the design of the <small>CVS</small>
module and vendor branch support.

<div id="index-Source_002c-getting-CVS-source"></div>
You can get <small>CVS</small> in a variety of ways, including
free download from the internet.  For more information
on downloading <small>CVS</small> and other <small>CVS</small> topics, see:

<div class="example" style="margin-left: 3.2em">
 http://www.cvshome.org/
 http://www.loria.fr/~molli/cvs-index.html
</div>

<div id="index-Mailing-list"></div>
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<div id="index-Newsgroups"></div>
There is a mailing list, known as <code><span class="nolinebreak" style="white-space:pre">info-cvs</span></code>,
devoted to <small>CVS</small>.  To subscribe or
unsubscribe
write to
<code><span class="nolinebreak" style="white-space:pre">info-cvs-request</span>@gnu.org</code>.
If you prefer a usenet group, the right
group is <code>comp.software.config-mgmt</code> which is for
<small>CVS</small> discussions (along with other configuration
management systems).  In the future, it might be
possible to create a
<code>comp.software.config-mgmt.cvs</code>, but probably only
if there is sufficient <small>CVS</small> traffic on
<code>comp.software.config-mgmt</code>.

You can also subscribe to the <code>bug-cvs</code> mailing list,
described in more detail in [[cvs: Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual#Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual|BUGS]].  To subscribe
send mail to <code>bug-cvs-request@gnu.org</code>.


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<p>
Next: [[cvs: What is CVS not?#What is CVS not?|What is CVS not?]], Up: [[cvs: Overview#Overview|Overview]] &nbsp; |[[cvs: Index#SEC_Contents|Contents]]||[[cvs: Index#Index|Index]]|</p>
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This document was generated on <i>a sunny day</i> using [http://www.nongnu.org/texi2html/ <i>texi2html</i>].
