CVS and the Web

Here is one notable quote about using CVS to maintain web content:

" . . . CVS . . . gives us the ability to reproduce pages as they were in any state or at any time since their creation, as well as the ability to look at a log of all changes to any page and see who made what change when.

"I don't know what production systems others are using, but I am honestly shocked that a document-flow system that you might pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for wouldn't offer this capability . . . "

For more information on who is using CVS to manage their web content, see our Web sites using CVS page.

For More Information

The following book briefly mentions using CVS to manage web content. It probably isn't the only one.

• How to Set Up and Maintain a Web Site by Lincoln D. Stein, second edition, 1997, is a comprehensive yet concise introduction to all aspects of running a web site. It briefly mentions using CVS to manage web content. The CD-ROM which accompanies the book includes a copy of CVS 1.3-s2.

There is a nice online introduction to managing web content with CVS, by Sean Dreilinger.

There is a nice introduction to using CVS for maintaining web content at "Managing websites using Unix", Daemon News, Mar 1999.

We have a Development of CVS: Web page featuring experimental code and information aimed at people who are developing packages to facilitate working with CVS and the web.

CVS can be set up to automatically publish a new version of your pages to your web server when you check them in to CVS. The simplest way to do this, if your CVS server is on the same machine as your web server, is described in the Keeping a checked out copy section of the CVS manual. There are also other solutions which accomplish more or less the same thing, described on Development of CVS: Keeping a checked out copy.

There are a variety of packages which allow one to browse or edit version controlled files using nothing but a standard web browser. See for example cvsweb or the JCVS Servlet.