Recently, I decided to give CVS a try after quite a few readers told me that it is worth using. Since I want to have a “log” of my activities regarding CVS, I decided to abuse this blog to share it with other fellow developers who want to share the experience of using CVS with PODS…
Please do not attempt to follow this column if you have no idea of straightforward processes like installing apps. Many obvious things are left out-if you never set up a box before, please do not attempt it(or be prepared to ask questions via anonymous comments and google)
Anyways, the first thing is deciding about where to run the server on. I deecidd to juse an external server because it is less risky. The server does not have access to the internet(because my router has problems giving out IP’s to two boxen connected to the same port via a switch), and thus it will be less prone to viruses,… . In addition, the PODS box does not get bogged down with an extra task.
CVS is a Unix application. However, people who dislike Unix can still use it-there is a lovely server available for Wibndows NT from March Hare. My box has the following specs-you can for sure find a similar one(the processor is overpowered BTW) in your basement or at the flea market/ebay:
- 350MhZ Pentium 2
- 16 MB of SDRAM
- 10 Mbit ISA network card
- 4GB SCSI hard disk
Getting NT onto the box is no straightforward process. NT4 for sure looks like Windows 95, but it lacks Plug and Play,… . SO, you will need configuration floppies for every hardware that you intend to use. I found the configuration disk for my network card at the Driver Museum. Googling for the chip name(you may need to pull some sticker off) usually helps you out here.
Once you have the basic NT installation up and running, you need to prepare it for beeing able to run CVSNT. I installed the following patches onto my machine-generally, install everything that you can get(I could have forgotten one):
- Service Pack 6a
- Internet Explorer 6
- Windows Installer
Then followed CVSNT and PalmVNC(for the desktop component). After you have that done, set up the network card so that your terminal can be pinged from other machines on the local network. I chose not to give the box DHCP IP obtaining or DNS, as that may make it more difficult for it to communicate with the net(it doesnt even have the standard gateway filled out). If there would be a working web server on it, people would for sure be tempted to abuse it as a surfing station..
So, thats it for today. Your machine is working, and all the servers are installed. In the next episode, we will discuss configuring VNC and CVSNT.
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I assume that you’re more Windows savvy, but I just recently set up a Fedora Core 4 system to run CVS. I have set up CVSNT on XP and Windows 2000 boxes in the past, but I found getting the Linux install running a lot simpler.
My Palm OS development is done with CodeWarrior, but what I do is use Eclipse to manage the workspace. I configured Eclipse to launch the CodeWarrior IDE for .mcp files (and Constructor for .rsrc and PilRC for .rcp files). The CodeWarrior CVS plugin is too finicky to use, and it doesn’t really handle how I have the code organized.
The other thing is setting up proper .cvsignore files to make sure you only put the stuff you need into the repository, but that’s not all that hard (once you get comfortable with using CVS, that is).
I think WinCVS is a good idea to make this job. It’s freeware and if the server runs under Unix/Solaris it runs very well.
In our firma we use the version 1.3 beta7 because it’s more stabile than the new 2.0 version. It runs also under the old NT4 and the jet under XP.
When using Windows there is another good tool named tortoise cvs. This pluged into the windows fileexplorer and it’s also freeware.
Hi,
the problem is my utter lack of Linux knowledge. Dont ask me how to get such a box online. And since NT was handy…
About VNC-I had good experiences with both packages from PalmVNC. However, I am at my vacation house now-and thus can’t tell you which one I chose…
Best regards
Tam Hanna
It sounds like you’re pretty far down the road already with CVS, so I won’t try to distract you at this point (and using CVS for version control is definitely better than nothing!) However, Subversion is probably a better choice for someone starting from scratch at this point in time. It is viewed by most as the “successor” to CVS, and it’s very well supported on Windows (and Unix/Linux, Mac OS X, etc.)
Hi,
the main reason I chose CVS is that it seems to be the most popular choice as of now. SourceForge does it, Eclipse does it,… . So, in case sth should ever go wrong, my chances of suport are high.
Best regards
Tam Hanna