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Essential CVS
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Author: Jennifer Vesperman
List Price: $39.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0596004591
Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates (June, 2003)
Edition: Paperback
Average Customer Rating: 3.89 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 3 out of 5
Not Clear on the Merging Branches
For me the quick way to review a CVS book is to read it's sections on merging branches. It was covered in about two pages in this book and wholely inadequate.For a general CVS admin reference, it seems OK, but I was too disappointed regarding branches. My quest for a great CVS book continues....
Rating: 4 out of 5
Good book if you're a CVS user...
If you're looking for a low-cost entry into the world of version control software, the open source CVS package is a very logical choice. But like most open source packages, the documentation is less than perfect if you want something more than just a reference manual for learning purposes. It's at this point you need a book that explains a bit more about the why's of what you need to do. This book fills that gap nicely. The target audience is both users and administrators of the system. Vesperman starts out with an explanation of what version management and source control systems are, and then goes into the usage of CVS for those different groups. And if you are thinking that CVS is just for managing code, think again. CVS can be used to manage any document types, such as code, documentation, images, etc. If you're using Websphere Application Development Studio (WSAD), the CVS package has an interface built right in. You select that option during WSAD installation, and the right perspectives are added to your environment. You will still need to have a CVS server set up somewhere to manage the source files, and this book will be very helpful in aiding you during that process. Since CVS is based on the Unix platform, all the examples in the book are set up to use command line interfaces to the functions. Vesperman uses plenty of scripts to show you how to accomplish all the functions, which is great. In my case, I'll be using WSAD to work with CVS as a developer, so many of those examples were wasted on me. Still, the concepts behind CVS and the general capabilities of the package are covered well, so a read-through on this book will benefit you either way. For Notes/Domino developers, there is no interface you can use for this package. You could, if you wanted, check in your .NSF files and use CVS to manage the version control. You'd lose some of the benefits of CVS like file comparison, but it's still better than having no version control at all. There are non-CVS systems out there for Notes/Domino content management, and you would probably derive more benefit from those packages than trying to use CVS in this case. Conclusion
If you are moving into the WSAD world for Java development, check out CVS for version management. If you do decide to go with CVS, get a copy of this book to supplement the official documentation. Recommended.
Rating: 4 out of 5
An effective coverage of CVS
Being part of the "Essential" series, this book doesn't pretend to be the ultimate reference on the subject, but it delivers an effective coverage of CVS. The author start from scratch and goes up to explain more advanced features like tagging and branching. In my opinion the way chapters are organized is not ideal and there is some redundancy here and there, notwithstanding these shortcomings, I would recommend it. Just be advised the whole book is totally Unix centric and all the samples cover only command-line usage.
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