from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
Concurrent Versions System
CVS
<programming> (CVS) A {cross-platform} {code management
system} originally based on {RCS}.
CVS tracks all revisions to a file in an associated file with
the same name as the original file but with the string ",v"
(for version) appended to the filename. These files are
stored in a (possibly centralised) repository.
Changes are checked in or "committed" along with a comment
(which appears in the the "commit log"). CVS has the notions
of projects, branches, file locking and many others needed to
provide a full-functioned repository.
It is commonly accessed over over its own "anonCVS" {protocol}
for read-only access (many {open source} projects are
available by anonymous CVS) and over the {SSH} protocol by
those with commit privileges ("committers").
CVS has been rewritten several times and does not depend on
RCS. However, files are still largely compatible; one can
easily migrate a project from RCS to CVS by copying the
history files into a CVS repository. A sub-project of the
{OpenBSD} project is building a complete new implementation of
CVS, to be called OpenCVS.
CVS Home (http://cvshome.org/). OpenCVS
(http://opencvs.org/).
(2005-01-17)