CVS FAQ

The CVS FAQ is a user-written document; to a fair extent it duplicates material which is available elsewhere (for example, several sections of the Cederqvist were taken directly from the FAQ and then updated). Nevertheless, it has a certain following and may explain some topics which are not covered well elsewhere. The biggest caveat is that many parts of it are out of date.

The CVS FAQ contains various items about CVS, mostly topics which have come up on CVS mailing lists in the past. It ranges from CVS usage to (a few) comparisons of CVS with other configuration management questions to discussion of possible future features for CVS.

The CVS FAQ was maintained by David Grubbs until 1995. It was out of date and not being maintained, but in 1997 Pascal Molli decided to start maintaining it with the FAQ-O-Matic package which allows any contributor with a web browser to help maintain it.

The answers which are dated "6/13/1997" are really from the 1995 FAQ, for the most part. Many of them are out of date. If you have some time, you are encouraged to double-check them against other sources like the Cederqvist manual and update the FAQ. If you don't have such time, take them with a grain of salt or a few.

Availability

CVS distributions contain a copy of the FAQ in the file FAQ. For CVS 1.7 through 1.9 this will not contain the FAQ but instead a brief file saying that the FAQ is out of date. In CVS 1.10 the FAQ, from the FAQ-O-Matic, has reappeared. The latest FAQ from the development version of the CVS distribution is available via cvsweb.

You can also look directly at the FAQ-O-Matic on Pascal Molli's site.

For information on the FAQ-O-Matic software itself, see our FAQ-O-Matic page. Note that last we looked, the CVS FAQ-O-Matic was running a rather old version of the FAQ-O-Matic software (version 1.x), so it might be unexpectedly hard to deal with.

Development of the CVS FAQ

In a message to the info-cvs mailing list on 6 Feb 1998, Karl Heinz Marbaise <kama@hippo.fido.de> expressed interest in maintaining the FAQ.

In case it is helpful to Karl or others working on the FAQ, here are the changes which were made at Pascal Molli's FAQ-O-Matic.

• Changes from the first part of 1998.
• Changes from about Dec 1997.
• Changes from about Nov 1997.
• Changes from about Sep 1997.