New Linux User

CrossVC

by Clair on September 18th, 2007

I’ve been assigned to a client’s office and we’ve been using Windows XP primarily because the installers for the tools we use are for Windows. From the data modelling tool, to the project management tools — we’ve got to run them under Windows. I’ve been thinking of how to use Ubuntu and I had the chance to experiment today. I had no tasks which required me to use the tools they gave us so… I was free!

One of the things I had to do today was prepare the worksheets for our discussions with the users. Any office suite with a spreadsheet app will do. And another requirement is that I have a CVS client. I’ve never used CVS on Linux yet because I am used to Subversion and tools like RapidSVN and eSVN.

What’s CVS?

CVS means “Concurrent Versions System” and this is what we have to keep track of the changes in our files, mainly our documents. Our data models are not covered by this system. Anyhow, the worksheets I had to edit for tomorrow’s meeting are on the CVS repository. There’s a server which has that repository and I need a client to check out the files and also check them back into the repository once I am done with the edits.

Enter CVS and CrossVC

I had to download and install the packages for CVS and CrossVC. The good thing is that I got them both from the Ubuntu repositories. I suppose that with other distros, they’d find them in the equivalent of their repositories. CrossVC’s download page has the binaries for Debian, SuSE, Red Hat and Fedora. In my case it was via Apt that I installed these packages. I did an apt-cache search for particular packages that dealt with CVS. You could say that CrossVC was the first one that caught my eye.

Click the image to get a better view of the screenshot.

Using CrossVC

When you have CVS and CrossVC already, you could check out a copy of your work already. In CrossVC, you would have to do a “check out” just like in Tortoise CVS. It’s just that in this case, it’s a different app altogether, not just an extension on your shell. The usual details like server, username, module name, etc. will be asked. Just like in Tortoise CVS you’d only have to indicate whether you’d be using pserver or sspi, etc. and so on.

Here’s the clincher for me though: I had to add a .cvspass file to my /home directory. I’ve been having “I HATE YOU” messages thrown to me when I tried connecting via pserver. Those who are used to Tortoise will find it weird so here I am, giving you a warning! It seems that it is required so that I could login and fetch the files and commit back into the repo. After that, I got the “I LOVE YOU” message.

I have to read up more on why it’s acting that way but for now, at least you know what it’s like to use a CVS client on Linux.

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