Introduction to CVS by Jim Blandy

Introduction to CVS by Jim Blandy is designed for introducing new users to CVS or providing to each member of a team which is using CVS. It was designed for a one day course in CVS. It covers basic CVS usage (checking files in and out of CVS, viewing differences and logs, handling conflicts, and adding and deleting files). It does not cover using tags, using branches, or any topics which are more advanced or more of interest to a CVS administrator than a CVS user. It is about 14 pages long.

Errata

In section 2.7 (page 9), the partial sentence "You can add directories just as you would add ordinary files;" should be deleted (adding and removing directories in CVS is too complicated for an introduction, until CVS's behavior can be cleaned up).

In section 2.7 (page 9), the paragraph beginning "there are several strategies" does not make it clear that one can run "cvs log" on the old name to get the old log entries. The paragraph should probably be rewritten to clear this up and to document the "simplest" strategy rather than confusing the issue with other strategies.

Availability

The manual is on the web.

If you are looking to print it out, you might prefer to download from http://download.cyclic.com/pub/training/intro.ps in PostScript format. It is formatted for US letter paper (and should also print OK on A4 paper).

If you have texinfo software and are interested in modifying the manual or generating other formats, you may be interested in the texinfo source.