Version Control with CVS on Mac OS X

Ryan writes "Apple recently published an article on using CVS with Mac OS X. 'This article covers some of the most commonly used features of CVS, with emphasis on using CVS with static and interpreted web files (HTML, PHP, Perl, etc).'" It's a decent article, a good primer on how to get started, and it's nice that Mac OS X comes with a CVS server. Personally, I really dig maccvs for my CVS client, and there are plenty of other clients for Mac OS out there too.

Comments

bK

[Per Wigren]

Why don't they use BitKeeper instead? :)

Re:bK

[Anonymous Coward]

they do. But unlike CVS and other "free" software, BK has decent instructions and an intuitive interface, so articles like this aren't necessary.

Arsdigita

[Bouncings]

Reminds me of an Philip Greenspun article on the exact same topic. I think Linux Journal ran some ideas on that as well. Not exactly original.

What would really be cool is...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you could run cvs over the web in conjunction with apache and webdav (since they're both supposedly included with OS X)

Default version is 1.10

[Channing]

By default, cvs version 1.10 is installed which caused me some problems when connecting from a remote client to a repository on OSX.

It was easy to build the latest version but I hope Apple updates the default soon.

Chang

Project Builder Integration

[Fished]

Apparently, there is some CVS integration in project builder as well, but this article doesn't really talk about it based on the quick glance I gave.

I haven't tried to use the CVS integration, but thought it was interesting.

Re:Project Builder Integration

[fidget42]

The CVS integration is quite nice, althought it isn't obvious how to bring in a legacy CVS program. It is also missing a way to update the entire tree (i.e., 'cvs update -dP'), but I can live with the way it handles CVS. The diff/merge and version tools are also quite nice.

Re:Project Builder Integration

[tb3]

There's a decent article on CocoaDevCentral about setting up CVS and ProjectBuilder.

I managed to get it working without too much trouble. It works pretty much the way you'd expect an IDE to work with SCM.

very interesting

[self assembled struc]

the article makes several references to using BASH and/or SH, yet, by default OS X doesn't include BASH (i had to compile and install it myself, and then figure out netinfo to get to be my default shell).

Re:very interesting

[dborod]

i had to compile and install it myself, and then...

You can grab a bash binary at:

http://www.osxgnu.org/software/Shells/bash/

The package installs nicely and includes directions on how to have it become your default shell.

If I had a sig you'd be done reading it

Re:very interesting

[tarzan353]

You don't have to use NetInfo, just type "chsh" at a command prompt.

Re:very interesting

[CottonEyedJoe]

I have heard rumors to the effect that Bash will soon replace zsh as the default bourne style shell on OSX....Personally, I use ksh because I work with alot of SysVr4 variants where ksh is ubiquitous.

Zsh is probably undeserving of its current bad rep. But bash is king on free unix these days and aside from a bad case of the emacs syndrome (bloat) its a pretty good interactive shell.

Re:very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

bash is a good interactive shell, but it sucks at posix sh compliance.

Use Perforce

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Perforce rather than CVS. It is too bad that Perforce doesn't integrate with project builder they way it does with Metroworks CW. I hope that changes soon.

maccvs works?

[softsign]

Hey Pudge, how'd you get maccvs to work? I tried using it with a fink install of python, but it didn't seem to like that and said it preferred MacPython. Then I tried getting that to work with no luck as well (I didn't exactly try too hard since the idea of keeping two python installs on one machine didn't appeal to me). Any ideas? I don't really feel like messing with a GUI for CVS unless I know it'll work...

Re:maccvs works?

[Clith]

I do commercial Mac software development, and we use MacCVS Pro to great effect. I recommend it highly. It doesn't hurt that it's GPL and has been stable for over a year.

It is interesting to note that the new version of CodeWarrior for MacOS, version 8, comes with a CVS plugin (not mentioned on that page). I haven't had a chance to try it yet, though.

One thing that does bother me about the various incarnations of CVS on the Mac is how poorly they work together. Partly this is because of the different ways in which they work around CVS' inability to deal with MacOS' multi-forked files. For cocoa apps [like iJournal and Fire] this is not much of a problem, because the old NeXT-style Cocoa development environment sticks strictly to simple data files with no resource forks, which works perfectly with all varieties of CVS.

The upshot is that if you are working with files with resource forks using CVS, you'd better make sure everyone agrees which CVS client you are going to use.

Re:maccvs works?

[frogmella]

Don't know if this helps, but you don't need Python for MacCVS unless you're using macros. Just switch off that message at startup. and it works fine.

Really, really stupid question...

[GORDOOM]

Umm... shouldn't that be "version-controlling-y-goodness?"

(Sorry! Couldn't resist!)