CVS on VMS

CVS is a version control system, which allows you to keep old versions of files (usually source code), keep a log of who, when, and why changes occurred, etc., like RCS or SCCS.

The VMS port must be considered unpolished. Although previous versions have been in use at one large site since about October, 1995, and the port is believed to be quite usable, various VMS-specific quirks are known and the port cannot be considered as mature as the ports to, say, Windows NT or unix. As always, future progress of this port will depend on volunteer and customer interest.

The VMS port is of the CVS client only. Or in other words, the port implements the full set of CVS commands, but cannot access repositories located on the local machine. The repository must live on another machine (a Unix box) which runs a complete port of CVS.

Where to get CVS for VMS

The OpenVMS Freeware CD-ROM Version 4.0 contains a copy of the CVS source distribution together with a few notes about the VMS port. The version is the 960925 snapshot, which is similar to but not identical to the 1.9 release. If you have a reason to want to use the OpenVMS Freeware CD-ROM, this might be useful, but for the most part you may be better off getting a more recent source distribution.

The Cyclic download site at http://download.cyclic.com/pub/ contains executables of various versions of CVS for both VAX and Alpha. Note that with CVS 1.9 the "cvs login" command does not work on VMS 7.x. One workaround is to run "cvs login" on a Unix box (or VMS 6.x box) and copy over the .cvspass file.

For more information

The CVS page from the FreeVMS project describes the use of CVS in that effort.

See the VMS section of Cyclic's Development of CVS: Portability page for more information about the VMS port particularly aimed at people who are interested in contributing to that port.