Talk:Concurrent Versions System

message: User:WikiLaurent has marked the "Criticism" section as NPOV-section|reason=The table is presented in a "Criticism" / "You're wrong" format. Needs to be made neutral.
The section highlighted as NPOV was changed by User:AlanUS in March 2012 from a paragraph format to a 'tabular' format.
A neutral POV is one where sides are not taken - which is exactly the point of the criticism section - it argues for and against the 'cvs way' of doing things - addressing the opinion by some that CVS is merely defficient, when the authors of the product argue that it's not deficient - that there are strong design reasons for the strength of those decisions.
I disagree that the table is NOT written from an NPOV, but the easiest fix for the format is to restore the original non-tabular version from pre-22 March 2012.
Any feedback appreciated.
Arthur (talk) 07:43, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV / Criticism 

message: People keep claiming CVS is not actively developed.  I've added clear citations that show that it has regular patches committed.  Please do not simply delete stuff - particularly if there are citations.  If you have evidence to cite that it is not active please cite it and ADD to the article.  If everyone just deletes 2 lines then in a month there will be no lines left - that's not the way to write an article.
Part of the problem is that the word 'active' is subjective - I think active development is the fact that there is a bug report and someone fixes it.  No bug report, no development in a mature product.  Products that are new and full of bugs (subversion anyone?) have a lot more changes because a lot more bugs are reported and need fixing.  To claim that CVS development is not active just because it's been written well and doesn't have a new bug reported every 5 minutes is unfair and unhelpful.
So I've tried to reword that paragraph without using the word 'active' so hopefully it's less ambiguous.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArthurBarrett (talk • contribs) 00:07, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Active Development or Not? 

message: I don't think there's any "ambiguity" about CVS's status at all.  Everyone knows its history and its current development, and neither of those involve the FSF except as a resource.  It's not a GNU project, period.  Anything on the GNU site that seems to indicate otherwise is simply mistaken.  --LDC
Well, you'd have to define "GNU project" then. Do the programmers have to be paid by FSF? After all, FSF seems to own copyrights to parts of CVS. AxelBoldt
:It gets rather confused at times.  I worked on Gnucash, the GNOME accounting app, for a while.  The copyright of the package is like Linux - it's GPL, and the copyright is owned by the individual authors, of whom there are quite a few.  We discussed assigning the lot to the FSF, but we never got around to it.  The project's web page, mailing list, and CVS archive was hosted on one of the developer's boxes.  Given all that, I assumed that we weren't an "official" GNU project, and said so on the ML when somebody asked.  I promptly got corrected by the original developer, who said RMS considered us so and mailed him privately on various issues on occasions.  We shrugged and got back to work, and it makes no practical difference as far as we are concerned.  --Robert Merkel
----
I suspect this is the case with CVS as well: Stallman simply claimed it as a GNU project
without asking the devlopers what they think, and without the FSF having had anything to do with its creation or maintenance. --LDC
:That is a bit too strong, I think. Jim Blandy was one of the founders of (now defunct) Cyclic Software, which maintained CVS for a long time. He then became one of the maintainers of GNU Guile -- which is incontrovertibly a GNU project. Anyway, even though the FSF may not directly do anything, if the developers say it's GNU, then it's GNU.  --Hari
----
During the recent move of CVS development from cvshome.org to savannah.nongnu.org, the CVS team was officially informed that they are not considered a GNU project by the FSF, despite the FSF holding some of the copyrights and despite RMS sometimes asking for development favors (I had asked directly before about CVS's status without receiving a response).  I think most of the pages on gnu.org have been corrected to reflect this.  I updated the article accordingly.
Is there any reason not to archive this discussion?
Derek Price
: Is there a reason to keep this section in the article?  It has had the unreferenced section template up for over a year & seems to be WP:OR.  I do not think the way it is phrased currently actually improves the article, even if references could be found. --Karnesky (talk) 15:27, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I suspect there is a reason to keep it.  Or several.  Or something like it.  When I speak to Joe Average and he tells me he's using CVS - a little digging usually find he's using TortoiseCVS (which includes and is written for CVSNT) or DCVS etc etc - very rarely is it this CVS.  As discussed elsewhere in this article - it is the 'yet another cvs' phenomena - but in peoples mindshare they are all called CVS.  OK - long time to make a point: to distinguish THIS CVS from all the others, Joe Average often calls it GNU CVS.  This is OK - it's just a name - but I think this section helps clarify the literal meaning of 'GNU CVS' versus the popular name 'GNU CVS'.  Alternatively all this could be put into a disambiguation article. Arthur (talk) 13:01, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Softarch Jon has decided unilaterally to cut this section of the article, without discussing or addressing any of the points in the discussion page.  So I've undone the cutting, again. Dear Softarch Jon : read the discussion page - and engage in the discussion. Arthur (talk) 08:54, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know if that is a very compelling reason to keep it.  I'd say that being unreferenced (and apparently not easily referencable) are great reasons to remove it (though I agree that Softarch Jon overstepped here). --Karnesky (talk) 23:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've altered the CVS disambiguation article to call Concurrent Versions System the Concurrent Versions System (GNU CVS) instead.  The may or may not help...  I propose making similar changes on the article itself (to refer to CVS in this article as GNU CVS.  This should make the section about the title 'GNU' more meaningful (in context)...  Not sure if this is really a good idea...  Arthur (talk) 21:54, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  CVS Status "ambiguity" 

message: It appears that this article was moved here from Concurrent Versions System a few weeks back. However, the article text indicates that the name should be capitalized. If there are no objections, I'll move it back shortly. Bryan 07:59, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Go for it. Mr. Jones 18:31, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articled Moved to Lower-case Version and Back 

message: This article currently deals with something that has become almost a protocol with different CVS versions being produced and supported by different parties - including OpenBSD's development of their own in-house implementation.  This article should probably split a bit more into a piece about how CVS works and leave the talk about the tools used for CVS in the Tools for CVS article - or alternatively it could simply add the Tools article to the bottom and have ths discussion on if GNU CVS is GNU or not above it.  Either way, as it is, this set of articles seem a bit biased and unfinished at the same time right nows, so something should probably be done.  Janizary 00:18, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  GNU CVS versus alternative CVS versions 

message: I'm adding this because the "Concurrent Versioning Systems" page says this is the place to discuss combining the articles on Distributed CVS and CVS.
Should the "Concurrent Versioning System" page hold information about all versioning tools, just the ones directly derived from the original CVS source, ones that implement the concurrent model, ones that *only* implement the concurrent model or is the "Concurrent Versioning System" page about the tool that goes with that name "CVS" and other tools should be allowed their own entries?
My vote is that the "Concurrent Versioning System" should be about "CVS" and should "mention" such tools as Subversion, CVSNT, Distributed CVS etc and that the authors of those products / packages should be free to create Wikipedia articles that describe what those products are and that such a factual description should be an allowable entry.
I work for March Hare Software who sponsor CVSNT development, and I recently tried adding "CVSNT" and "CVS Suite" articles (the free and commercial versions of CVSNT) to wikipedia and they were promptly deleted.  
User:ArthurBarrett/CVSNT 
and 
User:ArthurBarrett/CVS Suite
With 1.4 million annual downloads (site visitors and page hits are a significant multiple of this) I believe that CVSNT does warrant some discussion in the wikipedia.
I freely admit to not being a frequent or regular contibutor to the wikipedia, but I fail to see why Subversion, Distributed CVS and other tools all warrant separate articles and CVSNT does not.  The articles were originally banned due to concern that they contained copyrighted content, and once the copyright was clearly removed / assigned the articles were removed as marketing...
--Arthur 23:59, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  CVS, CVSNT and other variations - are they all "Concurrent Versioning Systems" ? 

message: I'm trying to promote this "standard" to opensource community and maybe publish it as a Wiki article ("CVS Best Practices" ?).  Would anyone suggest the best way to do it ?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CVS COMMENTS STANDARD
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  <type> <effect> [bug reference] [<": "> <description>] 
   <type> ::= { +++  | !!!  | +  |  !  |   *  |  -  }  
     "+++" - new feature for WHAT"s NEW.txt
     "!!!" - bugfix for WHAT"s NEW.txt  
     "+" - new feature
     "!" - bugfix  
     "*" - modification   
     "-" - deleted feature
   <effect> ::=  {bomb | ui | core | func | internal | future}   
     BOMB - development-level massive partially tested changes
     ui - user interface  
     core - system core
     func - functionality change  
     internal - internal or cosmetic change, do not affect users or developers
     future - #ifdef-ed code that do not change compiler output 
   <bug reference> ::= <"#"> <number>  
   <description> ::=  // a comment, try avoiding redundant "added", "fixed", ...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Examples of common CVS comments (original comments are taken from:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/tortoisecvs/TortoiseCVS/src/DialogsWxw/)
  +ui: hidden cancel button.
  *core: 64-bit portability patches from ...... 
  !internal
  !func: applied patch from .... to make searching upwards working
  !ui #1194077:  colors wrong in annotate (issue 3). 
  !func #1221702: create Branch crowded/missing text. 
  *internal: Inherit from ExtDialog 
  +internal: Update to wxWidgets 2.5.4; avoid using Connect(). Warning: Comp..
  !ui: translation
  -ui: special Save dialog for Make Patch. 
  +internal
  *internal: goto is evil. 
Mitra 01:19, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Great idea -  but maybe better to post on one of the newsgroups like the TortoiseCVS newsgroup, the WinCVS newsgroup, the CVSNT newsgroup (which is the version of CVS that tortoise and wincvs both use) or the info-cvs newsgroup.  My reaction that the "type of checkin" is better handled as metadata, eg: CVSNT has a separate "bug" metadata (used in Tortoise 1.9.x), and the CVSNT developers are considering a few other types. Typically installations use TAGs for this, not special characters in comments. Arthur 05:13, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  CVS Best Practices - 'a user-supplied description lines standard' 

message: I would love to see some comparison betweem ClearCase and cvs. To me cvs seems perfect but I see many people still prefer to use ClearCase. I would like to understand why. ori 15:49, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps a Revision Control comparison page with CVS, SVN, ClearCase, and others would be a good idea. --171.71.37.84 00:58, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Comparison of revision control software --Imroy 02:07, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  CVS vs. [[ClearCase]]  

message: I would like to see more information on how CVS can be implemented and used across organization for multiple projects.
:Is that a bit like expecting the entry for a Fat_Man to include instructions on how to use one?  I think the information you are looking for is in the manual that comes with the product  Arthur 00:14, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  CVS Implementation 

message: Whats software with out an info box?
I have added one, please fill in the blanks --Amckern 07:36, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox 

message: I have a problem with this statement in the "Features" section:
When they later check-in their changes, the server attempts to merge them.
This is how SourceSafe works, but this is not how CVS works.  CVS does merging on checkout, not checkin.  What actually happens here is the second user's commit fails with an out-of-date error, compelling him to update his local copy, which will then be merged with the latest version in the repository.  I think this is superior to the merge-on-checkin paradigm because you always have the ability to compile and test code before committing it to the repository.
At least, this is how I understand CVS works.  Am I correct?
:Yes, you are.  I re-wrote this part as best as I could, though it sounds a bit clunky to me.  Oh well, hopefully someone else will polish it further.  — Frédéric Brière (✎) 04:09, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  CVS attempts to merge the changes? 

message: The Wikipedia policy on sourcing is Verifiability, which requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations.
This is absolutely impossible for computing articles!!!!
As can be demonstrated in the above discussion on limitations - anyone who dislikes one computing tool and faviours another maliciously challenges any collection of more than 3 words in the article.
A 'citation is needed' for "Many Unix systems run in UTF-8 and so CVS on such systems handles UTF-8 filenames natively. For programmers working on Unix systems all with the same encoding then this response seems reasonable".  This is a bit like requiring a citation for "Many people breathe".
The big problem WIKIPEDIA has with this article is that it is mostly based on private unannotated research, because there is very little written elsewhere about the history and the development team themselves.  
I have a big problem generally with computing articles that it is very difficult to make meaningful citations, eg: that CVS is less buggy than other version control systems so has less releases.  One of the drivers of releases of software is bugs, so if there are less releases there are probably less bugs, but where am I going to find the research to cite?   However people reading this Wikipedia article are clearly going to be interested in reasons why CVS releases are fewer than others even though it is active.  How to answer the readers question whilst also being objective and providing citations?
There certainly are some quotes in the article that should be cited, but malicious challenging through citations is just unhelpful.  In future I propose that anyone adding a citation request should give at least some grounds for ANY alternative opinion, eg: a contradicting citation 
Arthur (talk) 10:39, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citations - How ? 

message: The ability to function as a client-server program is certainly one of the more important features of CVS from the viewpoint of developing with multiple programmers on different machines, but as written the sentence "CVS uses client-server architecture: a server stores the current version(s) of the project and its history, and clients connect to the server in order to check-out a complete copy of the project, work on this copy and then later check-in their changes" is incorrect.  CVS works just fine on repositories stored on a local filesystem with no server running at all.  Geoffrey Spear 18:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "client-server" 

message: Cleaning up some of links in external links section, found this link, which by its title seems to claim Brian Berliner is the creator of CVS
* Interview with Brian Berliner: CVS creator
It seemed strange that the creator of the item the entire article is about would not be mentioned anywhere in the article text?
In the article text, though is a quote "I created CVS to be able to... – Dick Grune, Dick Grune's website"
Will the real "creator" of CVS please step forward! Cander0000 05:56, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: On reread, I do see Brian Berliner mentioned in the history section, still unclear which of the two parties has claim to be the creator?  Cander0000 06:06, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Creator" of CVS? 

message: The following section, which I copied from the article, is unclear: 
::Common misconceptions about CVS include branching and distributed/multi-site/offline operation.
::* branching. CVS was the first version control system to implement branching and the branching techniques in other systems are all derived from the CVS implementation.  
::* distributed, multi-site and offline operation was always heavily supported due to the unreliability of the few computer networks that existed at the time CVS was written.
This section does not really tell us what these misconceptions are. It says that branching is one of the misconceptions of about CVS. I clicked on branching to learn more about this misconception, but that article doesn't say anything about a misconception. 
Should I conclude that "CVS was the first version control system to implement branching..." is the misconception? If thát is the misconception, what is the 'right' conception? 
I am going to remove the incomprehensible part of that text. Johan Lont (talk) 14:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  What are the misconceptions 

message: This page says that svn was released in 2004.  The changelog the footnote refers to says that it reached version 1.0 in 2004, which isn't the same as being released.  Each project has variable ideas of what version numbers mean.  It also contradicts the Subversion page, which says that svn was released in 2000.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ricky Clarkson (talk • contribs) 10:38, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The reasoning is that all the references in THIS article , and in particular  in the paragraph about "Yet Another CVS" all the dates referred to are "stable" dates.  If we cite the "project started" date for SVN then we should do the same for everything else including CVS itself.  I personally do not think that a "project started" date is very useful in this context since there are many many many tools that have attempted to replicate CVS functions that have "started" but never released a stable release and have subsequently become inactive.  Finally this is an article about CVS, not about SVN or any other "yet another cvs clones", so the reference is merely anecdotal. The correct place to write about the history and development of SVN is on the SVN article. I have cited a reference to the SVN changelog to show where the date comes from, and anyone checking the reference will see that there were many non-stable releases going back to 2000.  Arthur (talk) 06:56, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  svn release date incorrect 

message: Should terminology be used before it is defined?  I am referring specifically to the usage of the word 'commit' in the third paragraph under the Features heading, although there may be more than one instance.  I am not much of a wiki editor, I simply thought it would be appropriate to bring this to the attention of people who are.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gungfusteve (talk • contribs) 00:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terminology Usage Question 

message: Is CVS dead? Soon it'll be 10 years since the last release. 2A02:8388:1600:C80:BE5F:F4FF:FECD:7CB2 (talk) 22:59, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead project? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I feel like the lead section needs to be rewritten as it looks more like it is about the history of the subject rather than the subject itself. [Username Needed] 11:35, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Lead section

message: CVS can checkout a file based on a date or a revision number.
However someone has changed this to ""(but not by revision number as there is no project-wide revision number)"
Well, you can't checkout using a colour either.  This editor seems to be familiar with a version control system that uses project-wide revision numbers and thinks it's worth nothing that CVS isn't like this other version control system.  This article isn't a comparison though, it's an article about CVS.
The best I can do to fix this sentance is:
Clients can also compare versions, request a complete history of changes, or check out a historical snapshot of the project (eg: based on a given date).
Arthur (talk) 07:03, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  text modified 

message: In Concurrent_Versions_System#Adoption_and_successors it starts with a quotation that is quite a bit of "it changed the world" talk. I think the last sentence in the section, after the quotation is fine, and could be expanded, and maybe with a link to Comparison_of_version-control_software.  I know CVS was heavily used back in the day, but it might be difficult to document that.
MeekMark (talk) 17:46, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adoption and successors section