Open Source Development with CVS

Rating:
Summary: Good one!
Review: A bit much focus on the commandoline CVS-version. Bautifull chapter about being in charge of an OpenSource project. Good one!

Rating:
Summary: A must have, in my humble opinion
Review: First off, I would have to say that you'll (or, at least, I did get) get the most out of this book if you read the Per Cederqvist (sp?) manual either beforehand or concurrently. This book uses more of a tutorial, heavily example-oriented approach, whereas the Cederqvist goes feature-by-feature, with small examples. And, before you gripe about the wealth of open-source info in this book, remember that CVS was originally created (at least so I've heard, don't quote me word for word here) to facilite decentralized open-source development. So, that considered, it is infact not at all out of place in this book, and in my case, just as interesting as the rest of the book. I'm a novice config mgr, and I've only been using unix, and more specifically GNU/Linux software for under a year now, but as my skills progress, I'll definately get more involved in the free software movement.

This book in some ways, starts where the Cederqvist leaves off, providing a much needed (for me), and much higher-level exposition of CVS's key features. For example, I didn't really get the 'update -j' semantics until I read this book. Not long afterward, I was writing a lengthy script to automate branch merges, and efter re-reading this book, I found out that you could, infact pass -j to checkout as well, and took a good 40% off of the overhead of my script. CVS wrappers such as log.pl and others are nicely described here as well. True, this book doesn't make the perfect reference, but I've found myself many-a-time frantically flipping through its pages to find out why something I'm doing Isn't working!

But, this book may soon become obsolete, by its author no less. Karl Fogel is part of a development team working on a much desired replacement for cvs. There should be more details at 'subversion.tigris.org' (check out the rest of tigris.org while you're at it)... I'm not sure what state it's in right now, but several months ago I tried checking out the sources to it on a i586 Linux box (i think the sources are covered by the apache license), and was unfortunately not able to build it (oversight on my part?). But, it's up there, for anyone who wants it, and by now it's probably a lot better than when I tried it. Can't wait for the full release :)

Rating:
Summary: A must have, in my humble opinion
Review: First off, I would have to say that you'll (or, at least, I did get) get the most out of this book if you read the Per Cederqvist (sp?) manual either beforehand or concurrently. This book uses more of a tutorial, heavily example-oriented approach, whereas the Cederqvist goes feature-by-feature, with small examples. And, before you gripe about the wealth of open-source info in this book, remember that CVS was originally created (at least so I've heard, don't quote me word for word here) to facilite decentralized open-source development. So, that considered, it is infact not at all out of place in this book, and in my case, just as interesting as the rest of the book. I'm a novice config mgr, and I've only been using unix, and more specifically GNU/Linux software for under a year now, but as my skills progress, I'll definately get more involved in the free software movement.

This book in some ways, starts where the Cederqvist leaves off, providing a much needed (for me), and much higher-level exposition of CVS's key features. For example, I didn't really get the 'update -j' semantics until I read this book. Not long afterward, I was writing a lengthy script to automate branch merges, and efter re-reading this book, I found out that you could, infact pass -j to checkout as well, and took a good 40% off of the overhead of my script. CVS wrappers such as log.pl and others are nicely described here as well. True, this book doesn't make the perfect reference, but I've found myself many-a-time frantically flipping through its pages to find out why something I'm doing Isn't working!

But, this book may soon become obsolete, by its author no less. Karl Fogel is part of a development team working on a much desired replacement for cvs. There should be more details at 'subversion.tigris.org' (check out the rest of tigris.org while you're at it)... I'm not sure what state it's in right now, but several months ago I tried checking out the sources to it on a i586 Linux box (i think the sources are covered by the apache license), and was unfortunately not able to build it (oversight on my part?). But, it's up there, for anyone who wants it, and by now it's probably a lot better than when I tried it. Can't wait for the full release :)

Rating:
Summary: This book was vital in setting up a robust Linux cvs config
Review: I cannot over-emphasize how useful this book was to me while setting up my cvs repository on Linux. All the examples were germane and were correct, and the gotcha-s were highlighted. I go back to this book all the time. I cannot make any comment regarding the worthiness of this book for folks trying to install cvs on NT, as I blithely skipped over any NT commentary, but as far as Linux/UNIX installation, the book was vital. I fully agree with the high rating this book has enjoyed.

Rating:
Summary: This book was vital in setting up a robust Linux cvs config
Review: I cannot over-emphasize how useful this book was to me while setting up my cvs repository on Linux. All the examples were germane and were correct, and the gotcha-s were highlighted. I go back to this book all the time. I cannot make any comment regarding the worthiness of this book for folks trying to install cvs on NT, as I blithely skipped over any NT commentary, but as far as Linux/UNIX installation, the book was vital. I fully agree with the high rating this book has enjoyed.

Rating:
Summary: Required reading for new CVS and open-source developers
Review: I don't understand the first reviewer's post about this book being poorly written. I found this book to be very easy to read, with a lot of content on managing OSS projects that I haven't found anywhere else. I really enjoy the book and highly recommend it to anyone working with CVS or OSS projects, especially if you're new to both.

Rating:
Summary: Not only technical, but also community info...
Review: I found this book a joy to read. Before ordering this book, I had read the GPL'd chapters online and found them to be quite good so I wanted to support the author with my wallet. I figgured the rest would be the regular pomp about Open Source that we are seeing alot of lately, but I could not have been more incorrect! The author not only knows his technical details about the CVS system, he fully groks the Open Source movement, personalities and community.

The author alternates chapters between community issues (ethics, forking, project maintenance and administration, as well as "people skills") and the technical nuts and bolts of running a CVS server and/or using a CVS client.

While the title touts the Open Source movement, CVS is just as at home in a closed environment, say a web development team, inhouse application development, or anywhere else that you need to track text based files. Mr. Fogel does a good job of showing run of the mill examples and code, as well as some more esoteric uses of CVS commands and utilities.

If you are doing any sort of development and are investigating content version control software this book (and application) are for you.

Rating:
Summary: karl fogel is working on a replacement for cvs!!!!
Review: I love this book, and it has helped me to use cvs. I wanted to mention a detail which might interest all of you readers of this book. Karl Fogel is now helping in the creation of a "cvs replacement" which will be built over the webdav protocol. the name of the product is "subversion". I'm assuming it's open source, and a beta is already out. A full release will be out later this year, and you can assume that the documentation will be as good as this very excellent book.

Rating:
Summary: It helped us !
Review: I was charged with setting up a CVS setup for our company and have found the book very helpful in explaining things like how to set up a repository and install CVS properly on solaris. I've been reading through the chapters on building and tagging and found the way forward.

Usually the book comes to the rescue when we find we need to extend our use and knowledge of CVS a step further. What more can I say ?

Rating:
Summary: Good Book.. Great Examples
Review: I was looking a good guide and reference for CVS, so I decided to pick up this book. Overall, I think this book does a good job of going through most of CVS's features, however I think there could of been a little more detail in the administration section and dealing with permissions. I was pleasantly surprised that besides covering CVS, this book gives some great background in to the OSS movement and the advantages of OSS in general. I would also like to thank the authors and the publisher for deciding to put most of the meatier chapters on-line, its nice to see people practicing what they preach.