The Importance Of CVS Compare Software By Sam Miller At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Version control software is very important in just about any industry. Picture the common scenario of computer programmers or software engineers who are developing a certain program. During the typical work day, the programmers and engineers would be developing scripts and revising them as they see fit. But what happens when all programmers and engineers are working on the same program? What if programmer A edits this particular part of the script, but the revisions are not incorporated because programmer B saved his own revisions, thereby overwriting the revisions made by programmer A? This would be pretty tragic, especially if the success of the whole program depends on the revisions made by programmer A. This is the main reason why it is important to incorporate version control software into your system. One of such is actually CVS Compare.

CVS Compare is one of the older models ever made of version control software applications. In fact, you can consider it as one of the pioneering ones in the industry. You may have heard of Subversion as one of the new models of version control software applications. Interestingly, CVS Compare is actually the basis for the development of Subversion.

Ever since the product was introduced, it has garnered a lot of positive reviews from its many users all over the world. Of course, it has also received its fair share of criticisms, but these can all be attributed to the fact that constructive criticism is always there. It is something that is actually needed, so that significant improvements can be made over time.

Here are some details about CVS Compare that you should know:

First of all, CVS Compare does not really provide atomic commits or signed commits. In its most basic form, atomic commits actually let programmers view related changes in a program to a single tree as just one patch set. One log message is also employed here. Without atomic commits, there would definitely be confusion for the programmers, since there would be no accurate tagging of the tree revisions made. Sadly, CVS Compare does not support this at all.

Signed commits takes security features a notch higher. Once there is a signed commit already, the file can no longer be modified in any way. You can also check if the author of the revisions is indeed the one making the revisions, and not just some impersonator in the field. Unfortunately, this feature is still not supported by CVS Compare.

However, CVS Compare does support working on subtrees and mixed working copy revisions. This means that CVS Compare allows programmers to have working copies of the program. The thing about these copies is that they would contain just the subtree that needs revisions or modifications, not the projects in its entirety. Moreover, with support for mixed working copy revisions, the many revisions of a working copy can be compiled simultaneously. Imagine how much time it would take for each working copy to be rolled back, in order for the revisions of each copy to be recompiled to make up one coherent whole. With this support, programmers can definitely say that CVS Compare software is indeed very useful.

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