CVS Kit Copyright (C) 1986-2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Portions Copyright (C) 1998-2005 Derek Price, & Ximbiot . Portions Copyright (C) 1993-1994 Brian Berliner. Portions Copyright (C) 1992 Brian Berliner and Jeff Polk. Portions Copyright (C) 1989-1992 Brian Berliner. All Rights Reserved This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to CVS! If you have problems or think you have found a bug in CVS, see the section BUGS in the CVS manual (also known as Version Management with CVS by Per Cederqvist et al, or cvs.texinfo--see below for details). If you are thinking of submitting changes to CVS, see the file HACKING. Please consult the INSTALL file for information on tested configurations. If you have a comment about an already tested configuration, or have tried CVS on a new configuration, please let us know as described in INSTALL. Free software only works if we all help out. Finally, we cannot guarantee that this release will not completely wipe out all of your work from your system. We do some simple testing before each release, but you are completely on your own. We recommend testing this release on a source repository that is not critical to your work. THIS SOFTWARE IS SUPPLIED COMPLETELY "AS IS". NO WARRANTY.... Thanks for your support! -The CVS Team ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What Is CVS? 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. It handles multiple developers, multiple directories, triggers to enable/log/control various operations, and can work over a wide area network. The following tasks are not included; they can be done in conjunction with CVS but will tend to require some script-writing and software other than CVS: bug-tracking, build management (that is, make and make-like tools), and automated testing. And a whole lot more. See the manual for more information. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes to people upgrading from a previous release of CVS: See the NEWS file for a description of features new in this version. See the Compatibility section of the manual for information on compatibility between CVS versions. The quick summary is that as long as you not using the optional watch features, there are no compatibility problems with CVS 1.5 or later. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Verifying the Integrity of Downloads: The official CVS source and binary releases are signed by the CVS maintainer who generated them. This does not imply any sort of warranty, but it does mean that you can verify that the file you downloaded did, in fact, come from a CVS maintainer. The OpenPGP keys of the CVS maintainers who have submitted them are in the KEYS file of the CVS distribution and are also available from many OpenPGP key servers. It is recommended that you verify the key fingerprints against an external source, however you obtain the key. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Installation: Please read the INSTALL file for installation instructions. Brief summary: $ ./configure $ make (run the regression tests if desired) $ make install (create a repository if you don't already have one) The documentation is in the doc subdirectory. cvs.texinfo is the main manual; cvs.info* and cvs.ps are the info and postscript versions, respectively, generated from cvs.texinfo. The postscript version is for US letter size paper; we do this not because we consider this size "better" than A4, but because we believe that the US letter version will print better on A4 paper than the other way around. If you want a version formatted for A4, add the line @afourpaper near the start of cvs.texinfo and re-generate cvs.ps using TeX. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * How do I get up-to-date information and information about other versions of CVS? See also http://cvs.nongnu.org http://www.cvsnt.org Anyone can add themselves to the following mailing lists: bug-cvs: This is the list which users are requested to send bug reports to. General CVS development and design discussions also tend to take place on this list. info-cvs: This list is intended for user questions, including general help requests. cvs-announce: CVS release announcements and other major announcements about the project are sent to this list. cvs-announce-binaries: Announcements are made to this list when binaries for various platforms are built and initially posted for download. To subscribe to any of these lists, send mail to -request@nongnu.org or visit http://savannah.nongnu.org/mail/?group=cvs and follow the instructions for the list you wish to subscribe to. The newsgroup for CVS (and other configuration management systems) is comp.software.config-mgmt. The gnu.cvs.help newsgroup is a 2-way mirror of the info-cvs@nongnu.org mailing list and gnu.cvs.bug is similarly a 2-way mirror of bug-cvs@nongnu.org. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits: See the AUTHORS file.