Version Management with CVS by Per Cederqvist et al

Version Management with CVS, by Per Cederqvist et al, is the main manual for CVS. It provides details on all documented CVS features, and also contains introductory material. It is about 170 pages long.

Strengths

The manual is intended to explain underlying concepts, describe how to use all the features of CVS, and give examples of command use. It does not assume knowledge of RCS or any other version control system. It is organized according to what you want to do with CVS, with indices to enable looking up a particular section by command name. Where it is good, it is quite good.

Weaknesses

The manual still needs work. Some sections are unclear or do not explain everything you need to know to understand them. The organization, on the whole, needs a lot of work (similar subjects are not necessarily grouped together; part of the manual is organized by what you want to do, as described above, and part is organized by CVS commands and options).

Availability

However you get the manual, the title page should contain a version number which is the version number of the CVS distribution which contains that version of the manual.

The manual is available in electronic format in a variety of ways:

• On the world wide web, Pascal Molli's CVS web site contains the full text of the manual.
• The $40 Cyclic CD-ROM contains the manual in the following formats. Despite the directory names, none of these copies of the manual are particularly specific to a given platform:
  • linux/BUILD/cvs-version/doc/cvs.info* - GNU info
  • linux/BUILD/cvs-version/doc/cvs.ps - Postscript, formatted for US letter size paper and should also print OK on A4 paper.
  • windows/cvs.html - HTML
• The manual is usually distributed along with CVS, in one or more of the formats listed above. See our How to Get CVS page for more on the various ways in which CVS is distributed.
• If you want the manual in another format, there very well may be a program out there to convert it; see the texinfo home page for more information.