What is the CVSNT Project

The CVSNT Project was began by several developers in 1999 to resolve problems with the open source CVS system, in particular support for a CVS server on Windows, Case Insensitive Filenames, and usability issues.

What is the EVS Project (CVSNT 3.x and EVSCM)

What is CVS

This is the function at the heart of all Source Code Management,Document Management and Configuration Management Systems.

CVSNT Professional and CVS Suite include additional tools to assist with deploying files to test and production environments, tracking who or what processes initiated the changes and much more.

What is the difference between CVS and CVSNT

CVSNT has continued to add features to the original CVS that support modern version control and configuration management best practice as well as maintain feature parity with CVS.

Today CVSNT is the most widely deployed version of CVS and is distributed with TortoiseCVS and WinCVS.

What is the difference between CVSNT 2.x and EVS (CVSNT 3.x)

Most notable EVS differences are:

• CVS/CVSNT/SVN/WebDAV and other clients are supported
• No RCS files (SQL database required for repository)
• Full support for rename/move

Why not merge CVSNT and CVS?

Merging the projects and merging the repositories for the two projects has been discussed several times with different members of the CVS project team. The problem appears to be that the CVS project has an established charter that dictates that only some kinds of changes are suitable for inclusion in that project, see here and also here. This is considered the CVS Project Charter.

The organisation of the CVSNT project has been designed to not hinder development with such a charter. Not having such a limiting charter encourages creativity and adaptation. Specifically since the software is designed to manage changes we feel that the software itself should not hinder change. The CVSNT project accepts change and changes as a part of the basic concept of version management, including changes to expand the supported methodologies. This has allowed the CVSNT project to add features and make architectural changes that the CVS project has not and probably will not.

This difference in philosophy as to how to accept changes is the core problem in merging the project teams. Both teams feel that each philosophy produces a result that users of each product want. Generally that is:

• CVS users want a free version control tool that implements the unreserved distributed methodology for unix, linux and cygwin.
• CVSNT users want a free version control tool that implements latest "best practice" including unreserved distributed as well as reserved and centralised for windows, mac, unix, linux and os/400.

What sort of patches prevent the CVSNT project and the CVS project from merging?

However leaving that aside, a recent conversation between some of the developers from each team revealed that these kinds of patches would cause the most problems:

• Structural Changes.
  CVSNT has changed the structure of some of the source code to make it possible to reduce security risks through better memory management, and allow the dynamic removal of insecure protocols such as pserver.

• Support for alternative ideologies to the core "Unreserved Distributed" model
• Features which are not core version control functions but could be seen as extensions to version control
• Features that some porting developers would find it difficult to support on their platforms.

Why not merge CVSNT and OpenCVS?

Where can I find old versions ?

You may also use the CVSNT client to checkout the source code of any publically released version of CVSNT and compile it yourself. For instructions on getting the source using CVSNT please see http://www.evscm.org/modules/Downloads/.

Where is the open source project ?

How do I use CVSNT ?

You will eventually want to determine a configuration management procedure that enables you or your organisation to meet its management objectives and works with your development culture or workflow. The eBook included in the CVS Suite is written to assist you in this process.

Can I use CVSNT to replace Visual SourceSafe, PVCS, ClearCase or Perforce?

CVSNT is not an emulator designed to replace any of them. However these tools solve problems generally defined by the phrases "version control" and "configuration management", and those are the same problems that CVSNT is designed to solve. Therefore in some situations it may be possible to switch one for the other and have very little impact on your business.

Several scripts are available for converting the core repositories of some versioning systems such as Visual SourceSafe to a CVSNT repository. March Hare Software can also provide consulting and training to assist with this.

Can I use CVSNT to replace CVS?

CVSNT Server and command line client are available for free download pre-compiled for the following platforms:

• Windows
• Mac OS X 10.3.7
• Solaris 9
• HPUX 11i
• Red Hat ES Linux v4

How can I support or contribute to the development of CVSNT?

• Financially by purchasing CVS Suite or CVS Professional Support.
• Contributing to the development - in particular by testing, producing test scripts and updating documentation.
• Advocating and publicising CVSNT

The first step to contributing to the development of CVSNT is to subscribe to the mailing list.

Newsgroup
news://news.cvsnt.org/support.cvsnt

E-mail list
http://www.cvsnt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cvsnt

The project currently has a need for testers. To test CVSNT you will need to set up your Windows/Linux/Solaris or HPUX workstation with Python and checkout the source code from the CVSNT repository. There are many existing test scripts in the repository however we need many many more cases covered which are presently done by hand. CVSNT also benefits from all the tests being ran on as many different environments as possible. Contact the newsgroup for more information.

There is a lot of mis-information on the web about CVS/CVSNT and not a lot of clear information about benefits and ease of migration from CVS to CVSNT. If you are a good writer then you can contribute to CVSNT by writing an article about CVSNT and submitting it for publication to an e-zine, a newspaper or a magazine.

Where are the GPL sources for Graphical Front Ends

How can I add information to the Wiki

You are encouraged to contribute to this documentation. If you are modifying an existing entry, please make sure you also fill in the comment field explaining the change.

Due to spam problems the wiki is only editable by users who request edit rights. To request edit rights send an email to the mailing list with the subject "request for Wiki edit rights" and give a brief explanation of what you propose to contribute.

What are the minimum system requirements to run CVSNT?

Note: On PCs a Pentium III or higher processor is requried. (AMD K6 is not supported). If you require support for older processors then you may download the CVSNT Server source code and compile it with an alternative processor preference.

Where to send the Bug Reports for CVS Suite users?

Under the heading "Where to send the Bug Report" is the CVS Suite support e-mail address.

I have an urgent problem!

CVS Suite support (CVS Basic Support) does not provide solutions in a specified time period and therefore is probably unsuitable for an urgent problem.

Once an order is received for CVSNT Professional Support we can usually have urgent production problems resolved in a matter of hours (or at most a couple of days).

Our pre-sales support staff are software engineers and will be able to give you a solid understanding of how we will be able to solve your problem. In addition they can also alert our support engineers in advance about your problem so that the correct resources can be deployed to resolve the issue as soon as the order is received.

What Information should I provide with a bug report?

• Your customer name and/or order id
• Results of running cvsdiag on the server and also on the client.
• CVSNT server version number (eg: CVSNT 2.5.02.2048)
• Name and version of cvs client (eg: Eclispe 3.1)
• Name and version of Server operating system (eg: Windows XP Pro SP2, or Red Hat Linux ES v4)
• Name and version of Client operating system (eg: Windows NT 4 SP6, or Solaris 9)
• The CVSROOT used by client (eg: :pserver:host:/cvsrepo)
• Screenshot or exact wording of error message
• Your e-mail address

• Affected files (eg: the RCS file from the repository)
• Debug trace of CVSNT command which causes problem: Cvs –ttt or if the problem is with the lock server: cvslock -test
• If you are using the :ext: protocol, the extnt.ini from the CVSNT Installation Directory on the Windows client
• Dump of the client environment variables. On Windows type set > mh.log and send the file mh.log

Can I search for questions other people have asked and the answers they got?

Is there a list of current outstanding bugs?

Note: Many bugs are fixed in the commercial release of CVS Suite or testing releases of CVSNT Community Edition long before they are released as a stable installer for free. If any problem is costing you time or money then you should purchase CVS Suite which will ensure you have the latest features, patches and the best support.

Where can I download stable releases of CVSNT?

The download page for stable releases of the free CVSNT is: http://march-hare.com/cvspro.

At the far right of the page is a "download box", choose the download you want, choose an export server and accept the license terms by pressing the button.

Where can I download testing and unstable versions of CVSNT?

Support for these versions is only available from the open source CVSNT newsgroup and mailing list.

Is CVSNT available for VMS / OpenVMS ?

Is there free support?

The majority of problems with CVSNT can be solved by upgrading to CVS Suite 2009 and following the included documentation. For support or help with CVSNT 2.8.01 and CVS Suite 2009 please contact the CVS Suite Pre Sales Support team via sales@march-hare.com. Trials of CVS Suite 2009 can be downloaded from:
http://march-hare.com/cvspro/

These were the last published guidelines about submitting a question to the Community mailing list:

• READ THE MANUAL. If you are looking at how to set up "locking", "access control", "permissions", "only user XYZ should be able to create/import" etc. etc. then this is the place to go looking, in particular the chacl, lsacl, setting permissions and config sections.
• Search this FAQ for an explanation
• Search for an answer using the mailing list archive at http://www.cvsnt.org/pipermail/cvsnt/. The easiest way is with Google Site Search. If someone asked the same question in the last 10 days or maybe even the last 30 days it is unlikely anyone will answer your question again.
• Search for an answer in the trouble ticket database at http://customer.march-hare.com/webtools/bugzilla/tt.htm. If your question is a "known issue" or "bug" then asking about it will not help get it fixed any quicker. The trouble ticket database may include instructions for a workaround.
• Be polite. Messages may be deleted if they are suitably impolite, and will certainly be ignored. If you have been impolite in the past any future messages may also be ignored or deleted.
• Do not use the word urgent. If your problem must be resolved in a fixed time period you should employ an experienced CVS implementor or use March Hare Software Professional Support. It is impolite to use the word "urgent" to people who are assisting you on a voluntary basis and the penalty for this is described in the above bullet point.
• Do not use a disclaimer, or if you do be aware of the following restrictions and advice.
• Make yourself aware of the CVSNT.ORG terms and conditions for posting to a public mailing list here: http://www.cvsnt.org/wiki/disclaimer .
• Use a subject on the e-mail that accurately describes the problem, these are not suitable:
  • Problem
  • Bug in CVSNT
  • Help
  These are suitable:
  • Problem logging in using Eclipse client and :extssh:
  • Why does CVSNT make files read-only on checkout?
  • PDF Document attached to Help first time users
• Provide a step by step sequence of how to reproduce the problem
• Include the name and version of cvs client (eg: Eclispe 3.1)
• Include the name and version of cvs server (eg: CVSNT 2.5.01.1976)
• Include the name and version of Server operating system (eg: Windows XP SP2, or Red Hat Linux ES v4)
• Include the name and version of Client operating system (eg: Windows NT 4 SP6, Windows XP Pro SP2, or Solaris 9)
• Include the CVSROOT used by client (eg: :pserver:host:/cvsrepo)
• Ensure that you quote the exact wording of error messages (do not attach a bitmap image of the screen showing the message - it will be rejected from the mailing list)
• Quote excerpts from affected files (eg: the RCS file, CVSROOT directory from the repository) - do not attach the files since the mailing list will reject them.
• Run cvsdiag on the server and also on the client and review the results. You may post excerpts in your message body, but do not attach the results because the mailing list will reject them.
• Quote relevant segments of a debug trace of CVSNT command which causes problem: Cvs –ttt or if the problem is with the lock server cvslock -test - do not attach traces to your mailing list posts since the mailing list will reject them.
• If you are using the :ext: protocol, include the extnt.ini from the CVSNT Installation Directory on the Windows client in the body of your email.
• Quote relevant portions of a dump of the client environment variables. On Windows type set > mh.log and review the file mh.log - do not include this entire file in your message since the mailing list will reject it.
• If it is an authentication or native file permissions issue - enable operating system auditing and post the resulting messages.

If you have anti-virus software installed on the server and/or the client ensure they are disabled during your tests. Scanning of Workspaces and the Repository or TEMP directories is a frequent cause of errors.

Do not ask questions about storing sandboxes or repositories on network shares. This is not supported for free. Contact March Hare Software regarding Professional Support options that may be available for you if you require this functionality.

To contact the newsgroup you can subscribe here: http://www.cvsnt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cvsnt or if you have a news browser installed you can click here: news://news.cvsnt.org/support.cvsnt. If you are sending attachments please cc support@march-hare.com

CVSNT exists because people like you did not simply ask questions, but contributed as well. Consider contributing documentation, testing, patches or by purchasing the CVS Suite.

Noone answered my question on the newsgroup !

If you followed the posting guidelines and you did not receive any answers then these are the top explanations:

• The version you are using is old, and the problem is not relavent to anyone reading it. If you posted a question about CVSNT 2.0.6, CVSNT 1.11, or CVSNT 2.0.58d then this applies to you.
• The problem is fundamental and you should read the online manual or buy CVS Suite which includes a clear step by step administration and user guide (eBook).
• You have not waited long enough
• No one wants to answer your question.

To guarentee an answer purchase CVS Suite or CVS Professional Support.

Why are there advertising messages in the commit messages (and how to remove them)

There is a discreet advertising message added to every commit from a windows CVSNT client or on a windows CVSNT Server to encourage more users to invest in supporting the CVSNT development effort (either by joining the newsgroup, contributing code/tests, or by contributing to the cost of paying development staff). Our goal is to add two additional full-time programmers and we believe we can achieve this if at least 1% of those that download CVSNT purchase at least 1 license of CVS Suite.

• The advertising messages can be removed from the commit log history using the admin command
• You can prevent the client putting the advertising in the message by using cvs commit -M "message" as described in Bug 5397.
• You can prevent the server putting the advertising in the commit message by setting HKLM/Software/cvsnt/PServer, "HaveBoughtSuite"="yes" as described in bug 5398.

The editions of the CVSNT software purchased from our web site (CVS Suite etc) do NOT include the advertising.

If you purchase CVS Suite from our web site and upgrade your client and server then previous advertising messages stored in the repository will be hidden from the output of cvs log etc, Existing commits with the advertising are not automatically altered by the purchased CVS Suite software only hidden so that it can no longer be seen.

It has already been drawn to our attention that some companies may want purchase a single license to assist the project but not license ALL their users, however our store does not currently offer such a product but may be updated to include this in the future.

All customers who purchase CVS Suite 2008 also receive access to a build of CVSNT 2.5.04 that hides previous advertising messages and does not create new ones.

The CVS Suite software currently for sale from the web site includes many features not present in CVSNT and so is licensed per person (ie: if you have 20 people accessing the server you should purchase 20 copies of CVS Suite).

CVS Suite also includes many bug fixes, a complete list of the 380+ changes between CVS Suite 2.5.03 and CVS Suite 2008 is available here.

On WinCVS I get "remote server does not support the ls command" errors

Reports of malware or a virus in CVSNT

The heuristics problem is typically resolved within a few days of it being reported. Other popular anti-virus products (for example, McAfee VirusScan and Norton AntiVirus) do not exhibit this behavior and may be used to confirm that the product you have downloaded is free of viruses.

You can compare the results from different anti-virus products by uploading a file here:
http://www.virustotal.com/

NOTE¹: March Hare Software do not have any affiliation with virustotal.com

NOTE²: The signed downloads of CVSNT, EVS, CVS Suite and CM Suite that March Hare Software provide from march-hare.com do not include malware or viruses.

I have set up an ACL but non authorised users can still check out files

The cvsnt command chacl is used to create an access control list (ACL). It is documented in the manual here.

An access control list is defined on a directory and branch (or trunk) to restrict read, write, create, tag and control by users or groups. The access modes are documented in the manual here.

Users and groups are synonymous - you can either specify permissions for individuals or groups. The user and group names used will depend on the authentication mechanism being used. Most CVSNT users authenticate against an Active Directory (windows) in which case the user and group names are the same as your windows login.

You can also use the lsacl or rlsacl commands to list the current permissions.

Owners (creators) automatically have administrative rights on any object they create.

The ACL system has two basic modes of operation:

• Allow all access by default
• Deny all access by default

CVSNT access control (and all other access control systems) are designed to work primarily on directories. Do not store a file in a "public" directory and try and use ACLs to completely hide it from all non-authorised users, store it in a separate (or a sub) directory and set the access control on that directory.

Location of TortoiseCVS.org FAQ

Is Eclipse/WSAD supported by CVSNT?

CVS Suite 2.5.02 Server and the free CVSNT Server support Eclipse clients.

Configuring Eclipse Windows clients to use advanced CVSNT protocols such as SSPI is possible but too complex to explain in a FAQ. The CVS Suite eBook chapter on configuring client connections describes in detail how to configure Eclipse clients to use SSPI.

Versions of Eclipse prior to 3.1 may refuse to connect to a CVSNT server. CVSNT servers since 2.0.35 have a configuration flag which when set forces the CVSNT server to impersonate a Unix CVS 1.11 server. This impersonation allows earlier Eclipse versions to work with CVSNT (you must also use a repository prefix for this to work - Eclipse does not support drive letters).

Since Eclipse 3.0 M9, repository paths must match exactly the case of the repository paths set in the CVSNT control panel. If it is not done this way Eclipse will see the repository and the files, but will not see the branches or versions.

If you have a problem with the interoperability try to get a client/server trace from eclipse before reporting bugs as otherwise it is difficult for the developers to diagnose the cause of the problems.

The following limitations of Eclipse clients are known:

• Cannot restore deleted resources from within Eclipse. This makes it impossible to "undo" a delete from within Eclipse. The workaround is to use TortoiseCVS or CVSNT command line client to restore the deleted file. The topic is covered by bug 75912.

XP Home always logs in a "Guest" (Simple File Sharing)

On XP Home the only workaround is to explicitly specify the username in the CVSROOT string, which will override the default. On XP Pro it is strongly recommended to disable "Simple File Sharing" (commonly known as "Broken File Sharing").

Checking out to a remote samba share fails

• They have not downloaded and installed the CVSNT on the actual client and are using a remote share or a samba share as a workaround. This is typically done from a Unix server to checkout to a Windows PC or vice versa.
• The user wants to store the working files / sandbox on their "home drive". This is typically done from a Windows PC.
• Several users want to share a sandbox

Support for sandboxes on remote shares is available with Professional Support (not CVS Suite support).

If you do not have professional support then storing sandboxes on remote shares is not supported. Use a Unix client on the remote machine to checkout the sandbox, or use a local drive on the Windows machine.

Error reading from server <whatever>: -1: Unknown error

The usual cause for this is Antivirus and/or "Personal" firewalls, which can break Handle Inheritance. To verify the culprit uninstall all such programs from your machine and try again (simply disabling them is usually not enough). If it then works re-install the software until you find which one is causing the breakage (then file a bug with the vendor concerned).

If all else fails try WinsockXPFix which restores the TCP/IP stack to a working state after spyware/AV/firewalls cause problems.

In particular the Nod32 av exhibits this behaviour. The current workaround is to disable the "IMON" service and reboot. Eset have been contacted about this problem. Until it is fixed it is recommended that Nod32 is not used on a machine running cvsnt.

Also known to break the stack is Aventail AutoSocks. No known workaround other than to uninstall it.

Cant authenticate - server and client cannot agree on an authentication scheme (got "")

[80090311] No authority could be contacted for authentication.

The SSPI protocol authenticates the client against the Windows Domain Controller or Active Directory. Microsoft have various security strengths for performing this authentication including NTLM, NTLMv2 and Kerberos.

CVSNT 2.5.02 clients will use the highest possible authentication security strength with the SSPI protocol - this is usually Kerberos. However CVSNT clients released prior to 2.5.02 generally used NTLM to authenticate with the server. CVSNT Servers prior to 2.0.51d can incorrectly respond that they support Kerberos when they do not. In this case the newer client will insist on using Kerberos and the connection fails with the message [80090311] No authority could be contacted for authentication.

The solutions are:

• Upgrade CVSNT Server to a stable version more recent than 2.0.51d
• Downgrade the CVSNT Client to a version older than 2.5.02
• Change the CVSROOT to :sspi;force=NTLM:user@host:/repo . In this case you will have to re-create your sandboxes or use a WinCVS macro to change the CVSROOT embedded in the workspace.

Connect using SSH "Unable to authenticate Couldnt connect to remote server - plink errorcvs"

Access denied FATAL ERROR: Unable to authenticate Couldnt connect to remote server - plink errorcvs

This is caused by a password failure. Use cvs logout then cvs login to correct the problem. For a more secure solution use the CVSNT Password Agent to store your password in memory rather than in the Windows registry or .cvspass file (unix).

Cannot connect using SSH, password prompt does not include username

cvs -d :ssh:user@host:/reponame ls
@host’s password:
Access denied

This is caused by interaction between CVSNT and PUTTY and occurs when you have a saved PUTTY session with the same name as the HOST. Alter the name of the saved PUTTY session to resolve this error.

Rights required to run CVSNT Server (Pserver impersonation)

The default LocalSystem account has this privilege, so impersonation will work without problems after a standard installation. If you change the user that the service runs under you may have to explicitly grant this privilige to the user.

On Win2003 (also XP SP2?) the server will also need seImpersonationPrivilege enabled. This is also enabled by default on the LocalSystem account. If your administrator has removed this privilege then you may need to create a special user with it enabled.

Error "The :<whatever>: access method is not supported by this port of CVS"

You should also make sure the cvs client executable provided with CVSNT is being used. Type "cvs -v" on the command line to check this.

The command "cvs info" will list the protocols installed by the client or server.

Connection takes a long time (around 10 seconds)

• Misconfigured reverse DNS.
  • CVSNT does a reverse DNS lookup on startup to verify the client hostname. This will usually complete very quickly, however it is possible to misconfigure the reverse DNS in such a way that the lookup hangs and eventually times out after around 10 seconds. Your network administrator will usually be able to sort this out in a few minutes, as its usually a simple misconfiguration. On NT4 machines there is a setting "Use NetBIOS for DNS resolution" which may help. (Q: Is there an equivalent for W2K or do they always do it?)
• Very slow connection to PDC
  • CVSNT needs to contact the PDC to verify identities and check privileges. Normally across a LAN this will be quite quick, but over a saturated network or over a Dialup (in local mode) it can be very slow.
• See also http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q308512 for a possible solution.
• Another thing to try: Disable the virus checker on the machine that hosts the CVS server.

I get "Cannot open <path>/CVSROOT: Permission denied"

On windows all the directories above the repository directory require "Traverse Folder" access for LocalSystem, on Unix/Linux the execute bit must be set on all folders above the repository.

Note that LocalSystem is not a member of the "Everyone" group and has to be given specific priviliges.

(If you are running the server under a different user to the default then replace "LocalSystem" with the user that you are using).

I get "Cannot create directory <temp path>/cvs-servxxx: Permission denied"

On XP and Win2003 this can be a problem because the default global temporary directory is read only for normal users. The solution is to use a special CVS temporary directory and tell CVSNT to use it via the control panel (see the various installation guides for details on that). The temporary directory needs write access for everyone that will be using CVS remotely. (Q? Shouldnt have to give LocalSystem access here - need to check).

On a Win2003 server, Non administrator users cannot execute scripts

Unknown escape character \P ignored.

How do I upgrade from older versions of CVS or CVSNT?

The latest stable version of CVSNT Server and command line client is available at http://march-hare.com/cvspro/.

CVSNT crashed, but it couldnt write its crashdump file (error 5)

How to install Solaris, HPUX and Linux packages

If you are not going to enable the auditing then you can install the Linux CVSNT rpm with the "--nodeps" option.

CVSNT crashed and wrote a crashdump file

When you manage to get a crashdump, zip it up and send it to crashdumps@march-hare.com, along with an explanation of how you created the crash.

In particular your explanation should contain the exact commands, the CVSROOT and any error messages. If at all possible try and reproduce the command with a trace, eg: cvs -ttt commit -m "test" > test.txt 2> test-err.txt

CVSNT crashed and I dont want it to try and send a crashdump file.

To avoid sending it you can just select "no" on the dialog box. There is nothing in the crashdump of particular sensitivity, just the place it crashed. If it bothers you then firewall it out.

Crashes should not happen - experience shows they are pretty rare overall (given the statistics of downloads vs. crashdumps it is virtually background noise).

CVS Lock Server crashes on start up

• conflict with something else on your system
• using an unsupported OS (eg: XP Home)
• zeroconf conflict (can be worked around by disabling zeroconf)
• running with simple file sharing enabled

To configure cvslock to start in a reduced function mode - use the control panel to disable the publishing of repository information (disable zeroconf on the advanced tab of the cvsnt control panel).

If the above information does not help to resolve your problem then run the following commands from the command prompt (Start->All Programs->Accessories->Command Prompt) and send the results to the open source newsgroup:

cvsdiag

cvslock -v

cvslock -test

How to enable server side and client side debug logging

Versions and Operating System

If you are generating debug logs for March Hare Software support you also need to ensure that you send information about your environment such as the version of the server and the client and what operating systems are being used.

Enabling Server Side Tracing

For security purposes tracing of what is occuring on the server is disabled by default. Enabling Server Side Tracing using the Advanced tab in the “CVS for NT” Control Panel (Windows) or the /etc/cvsnt/PServer file AllowTrace=1 (Unix) will allow the server to be traced. Enabling tracing does not create any log files.

Debug Logging by Creating a Client and Server Trace from the Client

Any command that is ran on the client can create a debug log. This is the most common and generally the most useful type of logging. Use the -ttt switch with any CVSNT client command, for example:
cvs -ttt add fred.txt 2> addlog.err > addlog.log
cvs -ttt commit -m "commit this file" fred.txt 2> addlog.err > addlog.log

The log will appear on stderr.

Creating a Server Side Trace (Windows)

You can enable additional server side debug logging by setting the following registry variable to the name of a file to accept the log:
HLKM\Software\CVS\PServer\ServerTraceFile

The file and path must be writable by the CVS Suite Server.

Creating a Server Side Trace (Unix)

You can enable additional server side debug logging by setting the following variable in the /etc/cvsnt/PServer configuration file to the name of a file to accept the log:
ServerTraceFile=log20050622.log

The file and path must be writable by the CVS Suite Server.

Creating a Server Side Communications Log (Unix)

If the $CVS_SERVER_LOG variable is set in the servers environment to a name of a file that can be written then everything sent to the server is logged into $CVS_SERVER_LOG.in and everything sent from the server is logged into $CVS_SERVER_LOG.out.

Creating a Communications Trace Log (Windows or Unix Client)

If the $CVS_CLIENT_LOG variable is set in the client environment to a name of a file that can be written then everything received by the client is logged into $CVS_CLIENT_LOG.in and everything sent from the client is logged into $CVS_CLIENT_LOG.out.
Eg: set CVS_CLIENT_LOG=log20050622

Why does CVSNT attempt to contact 69.93.197.231

What is the CVSNT license?

What is the CVS Suite License?

The CVS Suite License is available here:
https://www.march-hare.com/pdf/suite-license.pdf

100% of the business logic in CVS Suite is Free Open Source Software. 95% of total lines of code is licensed under Free Software licenses and the remaining 5% is licensed under a commercial license. It is NOT POSSIBLE to operate CVSNT SERVER without licensing the commercial code.

The CVSNT Community Edition with the Low Performance Server Service that was made of code that was 100% licensed under GPL/LGPL has been retired but is still available for purchase online for use by hobbyists (Note: The CVSNT Community Edition with the Low Performance Server has many known bugs and is not suitable for use in a commercial software devlopment team).

We meet our obligations under the GPLv2 Section 3 by supplying a public CVS Server - this is accessible by using CVS Suite Studio or via a command similar to this:
cvs -d :pserver:cvs:@cvs.cvsnt.org:/cvsnt co -r CVSNT_2_0_x cvsnt

Note 1: The public CVS server for source code is not guarenteed to be available 24x7, is provided by a volunteer and may be withdrawn at any time.
Note 2: since 95% of CVS Suite is licensed under the GPLv2 you are able to modify 100% of the business logic, but you will still require a commercial license to run the software. The 5% of CVS Suite 2009 that is commercially licensed is required at run time (eg: the server management process) and the source code for this is not licensed under the GPL.
Note 3 - if you are having difficulty accessing the server please contact our pre-sales technical support team via sales@march-hare.com

Purchasing Terms, Support Contract, Consulting Contact

The contract available here:
https://www.march-hare.com/pdf/standard-contract-2e.pdf

We allow customers to request clause 14.7 be redacted without additional charge.
For orders over £1000 we allow customers to request clause 3.1 to be changed to 30 days (or 60 days for long term customers) after a customer credit assessment.

If you require a contract with other clauses removed, modified or added, we will charge a contract fee of a minimum £1000. To discuss your requirements will will issue an initial invoice of £1000 - and a further invoice at conclusion of contract negotiations.

The Product Schedule lists the same information as the invoice issued by March Hare or receipt from the March Hare web store.
To request an itemised product schedule and signed contract please contact us via sales@march-hare.com

Are discounts available on support for Educational Institutions?

Who are March Hare Software?

March Hare began in Sydney Australia in 1998 as a loose collective of expert database programmers and has grown into a worldwide firm based on our expertise in designing and building enterprise IT solutions.

March Hare Software development lab is based in Manchester UK, and iSeries development in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Why do all links to CVSNT go to March Hare Software ?

March Hare Software are the primary contributors to the CVSNT project. We co-ordinate the testing and release process as well as manage the source tree.

Where can I find March Hare Software annual reports?

March Hare Software Ltd (UK) and March Hare Pty Ltd (Australia) are not publicly traded companies and therefore do not publish annual reports.

Who are the Directors and Shareholders of March Hare?

March Hare Software Limited (UK) and March Hare Pty Ltd (Australia) are not public companies and the shareholder registry is not a matter of public record. The existing shareholders wish to remain anonymous and no additional equity is currently being sought. The share registry is closed.

The current board of directors for each company can be found through the relavent legislative authority for UK and Australian Company Registrations.

Why did March Hare Software begin charging for CVSNT?

As of June 30, 2009 the Free Software Foundation have advised that we should charge as much as we wish or can because by funding development, we can advance the world of free software:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

March Hare Software have provided the development resources for CVSNT since 2004, including the releases: 2.0.51, 2.0.58, 2.5.01, 2.5.02, 2.5.03, 2.5.04 multi-site and the latest 2.5.05 Unicode (with advertising) release. We have done all this without charging mandatory fees as we are now being encouraged to charge by the Free Software Foundation.

In Chris Andersons book Free: The Future of a Radical Price he describes open-source projects like CVSNT as requiring a 5% take-up rate of the Premium Edition to be economical. If only one percent (1%) of people downloading CVSNT from our own web site in one (1) year bought one (1) copy of CVS Suite we could quadruple our staff and provide much more innovation.

The decision to take the advice of the Free Software Foundation as of June 30, 2010 was made for many reasons, including:

• CVSNT has many productivity features that comparable SCCM tools do not have, however:
  • People who use CVSNT Community Edition cannot identify these and do not use them primarily due to the lack of integration and documentation which has been available in CVS Suite for several years
  • The CVSNT development team need additional resources to implement even better productivity enhancements
• Continued strong demand for CVSNT, low community participation and insufficient response to our numerous requests for voluntary payments (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Feedback from the website that most people downloading CVSNT Community edition were unsatisfied because they required the features in CVS Suite (e.g.: support, reliability, documentation). i.e.: Visitors were unable to identify the correct software to download.
• Feedback from active community participants that they did not require the supplied packages because they build from source
• More below

Component parts of CVSNT (CVSAPI, CVSTOOLS, CVSFS) are licensed under the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL) which allows 3rd party plugins to be created using any available license.

March Hare Software will continue to produce such plugins under commercial license terms as well as continue to develop CVS Suite and CM Suite for customers who will or who have purchased those products.

Other Free Software (including MySQL and SVN) charge too

March Hare Software believe that MySQL and SVN projects are run well and they are great pieces of software. We also believe they have struggled with the same problems of funding future development that CVSNT has.

MySQL

Up to and including verison 3.23 of MySQL was licensed under the LGPL, however after this all future releases (including current releases) are dual licensed under GPL and a commercial license. To connect to MySQL server you must use the MySQL client library, and releases after 3.23 require that the application connecting to the server either GPLs their entire code (and the code of 3rd party plugins) or pays a license fee.

If the CVSNT project did this then it would mean that vendors of IDEs like Oracle Developer, Toad, SQL Navigator and even Eclipse (Rational Application Developer etc.) would need to pay us license fees to include CVSNT integration - even if it is not used by customers. We considered and discarded this approach.

We have also always considered that the openness of CVSNT was important - we use open protocols and with CVSNT 3.x (EVSCM) we even allow non-CVS protocols to connect to the server (SVN, WebDAV and TeamSystem). Restricting the server to only clients that are licensed in a particular way would severely alter the open nature of CVSNT.

SVN

If you are implementing a Change Management system in your organisation then the software must do a lot more than checkin/checkout. Collabnet understand this and provide a proprietary commercial solution - a very small part of which is SVN.

We considered and discarded this approach. The CVSNT Project has always striven to deliver a comprehensive change management solution - where all the business logic is open source (LGPL). This gives our customers access to the primary benefit of free software: the freedom to enhance the software and customise it to work best with their other systems and business practice. Funding the development of CVSNT means we can continue to enhance Free Software.

The research that has informed the devlopment of CVSNT from release 2.0.51 tells us that to obtain the benefits of change management the systems must do much more than check-in and check-out. If we avoided putting features like failsafe audit, user-defined change sets, file and branch level access control, token based active-directory authentication, promotion levels, multi-site redundancy etc. into the core open source engine then we would be encouraging people to do SCCM poorly where they have all the costs but few benefits. Instead we have always put these features in the core to encourage the use of SCCM best practice.

Conclusion

If you are contrasting project xyz with CVSNT we believe that weve done a poor job of explaining our initial reasons for this change in distribution.

The CVSNT project delivers SCCM functionality that no other Free and Open Source software does, and many key features appeared in CVSNT years ahead of other popular tools. The development team have many many more features we want to deliver (licensed under a Free and Open Source license) to help people manage change better, but we need more staff - and to fund this we have made these changes to the distribution model following the advice of the Free Software Foundation.

Why is SCCM with zero-dollar price tag a good thing?

Offering SCCM with a zero-dollar price tag has both advantages and disadvantages to those who write it and those who use it, this is our top list:

1. builds awareness.

This is possibly the oldest marketing trick in the book - people are reluctant to try something new so by giving it to you for zero-dollars then we reduce the barriers to entry and you are likely to try it. If the product solves problems for you or reduces your costs of doing business or increases your income then you are likely to keep using it even if other products are also offered for zero-dollars.

2. encourages use of SCCM

People who write SCCM / Version Control software generally do so because they believe that SCCM is useful. In the software industry (and IT departments of non-Software industries) the implementation of change control has traditionally been ignored because it is considered not-useful (a should do rather than helpful to do). Those that write the tools would rather be giving away copies than have them sit unused on shelves if it means that people have the opportunity to realise that the tools are not a chore but a benefit.

3. reciprocity, generosity and philanthropy

Some people will not be able to afford to purchase these tools at market rates, eg: they are students, they live in a 3rd world country, they are in a one-man dot-com startup funded by a second mortgage or the generosity of others.

Giving to these people has no net cost (because a sale was never possible) but builds a debt of reciprocity - when they are no longer students or when their business is successful they will have an ethical obligation to support those who supported them.

Regardless of how good a business idea it is to give something away - someone will never do it unless they are generous.

Why is zero-dollar price tag bad for CVSNT?

The picture that we have built up over this time indicates that whilst the benefits of a zero-dollar price tag for CVSNT may have once outweighed the disadvantages - that has not been true for a long time. Today in June of 2010 giving away copies of CVSNT causes enormous problems.

The decision to take the advice of the Free Software Foundation as of June 30, 2010 was made for many reasons, including:

• CVSNT has many productivity features that comparable SCCM tools do not have, however:
  • People who use CVSNT Community Edition cannot identify these and do not use them primarily due to the lack of integration and documentation which has been available in CVS Suite for several years
  • The CVSNT development team need additional resources to implement even better productivity enhancements
• Continued strong demand for CVSNT, low community participation and insufficient response to our numerous requests for voluntary payments (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Feedback from the website that most people downloading CVSNT Community edition were unsatisfied because they required the features in CVS Suite (e.g.: support, reliability, documentation). i.e.: Visitors were unable to identify the correct software to download.
• Feedback from active community participants that they did not require the supplied packages because they build from source

1. No up-front-cost; no benefit analysis

Many people who we speak with using CVSNT express an interest in switching to another zero-cost SCCM system in the near future. Analysis by firms such as the Configuration Management Institute and even the Financial Times show that there is an enormous cost to switching IT systems.

Clearly the cost of switching systems is being discounted due to the zero-cost of the software. Since the total cost of switching is not analysed neither is the business benefit of one tool versus another or the underlying benefits of the SCCM methodologies supported by one tool versus another.

2. Features not invested in, benefits not received

If CVSNT is chosen as the basis for an SCCM implementation without any consideration of the cost/benefit of different SCCM methodologies then there is a very high likelihood that when senior management want to implement a different SCCM methodology they will be told incorrectly that CVSNT needs to be replaced.

The failure of many people to use the advanced features of CVSNT such as failsafe auditing, merge tracking, user defined change sets (integrated with change control), Access Control Lists, Promotion Levels etc mean that when Management look for the reports that this information provide they wont find it - and will either assume or be incorrectly informed that CVSNT cannot do this.

When CVSNT is replaced with a proprietary system everyone loses out:
a) we who wrote the software and the free software community lose out on the funding that is given to some proprietary software vendor
b) the organisation loses the benefits of the freedom and flexibility of free software
c) the programmers lose out on using the tool they found lightweight and useful
d) the organisation loses out on large costs in re-training and inevitably in people working around the new system with other free software tools

3. We cannot help

For us far too many days begin with a phone call from a non-customer with a large team of people using CVSNT and they cannot get any work done due to some problem.

They patiently explain that they have paid someone else an amount of money to set the system up, or perform multi-site repository replication with proprietary software or paid someone for a proprietary graphical tool - so now they have no budget and they would like our help.

But we cannot help.

If we want our programmers to continue to work for us and the telephone company to keep the internet connected we need to pay them. If we give the software away for zero-dollars then we have to raise the money from elsewhere, almost exclusively support.

By giving the software away we are actually making it harder for people to get help - right at the point when they are experiencing the most problems is the point that we need to ask for money.

4. Insufficient funding for more great things

Many different teams create SCCM tools under Free Software licenses and we are all very aware of what each other are doing. Most SCCM features useful to commercial software developers were added to CVSNT years before they were added to other similar tools - our team of programmers and analysts have inspired many to create more useful software.

With more money our team can be more productive.

A few times in the past few years people using CVSNT have told us that they have spent their budget on graphical tools or other CVSNT add ons because they needed those features.

When we have explained that we already provide those features (or could easily have extended our products to include them) they are embarrassed that they lost the opportunity to help the team that has helped them and instead helped a team that provided nothing of value until they were first paid.

A better funded team here means better software and better tools for you.

Why dont CVSNT accept donations?

Accepting donations in most countries requires a different legal framework than how March Hare Software is incorporated. The additional costs of setting this up and administering it would far outweigh any possible benefit to the programmers, technical support and administrative team who bring CVSNT to you.

Why does March Hare charge for CVS Suite?

1.
There are many users of CVSNT who would like to contibute to the project but do not have the time to contribute to the code, documentation and testing and that for the price of the CVS Suite they can contribute and also get the benefit of some support and some great add on software for CVSNT.

2.
CVSNT and CVS Suite cost March Hare Software a lot of time and money to create. The enhanced TortoiseCVS, Workspace Manager, Release Manager and the Bugzilla and Build integrations make using CVSNT much easier which helps you be more productive.

3.
There are many people who would like to begin using version control and will benefit from the software however find it difficult to find all the information required to get started and if they do find it then it is difficult to understand or implement. CVS Suite solves this problem by matching a version of the documentation with versions of the software in a single package.

What payment methods are available for CVS Suite and CVS Professional Support

From our Online Store you can select any of our software products to purchase. All of our software is delivered by download from the customer area.

The Online Store accepts the following cards:

Can I use an American Express card to pay for CVS Suite and CVS Professional Support

Also see the following FAQs Payment Methods accepted via the online store and Tax and VAT

Tax and VAT charges when ordering online.

Can I use a Visa Purchasing card to pay for CVS Suite and CVS Professional Support

How is the TortoiseCVS included with CVS Suite different from the standard "free" version?

• Browse server for checkout of module or single file
• Edit dialog (must be enabled in preferences)
• Defect number integration on Edit, Commit and Merge
• Additional Preferences
  • Read only files on checkout regardless of watch state
  • Set ACL on edit for working with shared sandboxes
  • Edit dialog preferences
  • Disable looking for Modules file (not requried for CVSNT)
  • Eclusive editing options
  • CVS Server setting (for use with SSH)
• Improved context menu handling
• Show bug numbers in revision graph and log
• Support for CVSNT SSH secure authentication
• Is tested with the other components of CVS Suite
• Behaviour is consistent with the documentation included in CVS Suite
• Is supported by March Hare Software

Where is CVSNT for iSeries?

March Hare Software license the iSeries front end separately to the client and it is not available without a support contract.

What is the March Hare Software vision for CVS / CVSNT

Implementing version control effectively has a cost, but the benefits far outweighs that cost.

To see the vision come to pass we believe in making version control solutions widely available at minimum cost and tailored for use by the "average" computer user.

For version control to be effective it must ensure the integrity of all managed items in each stage of their lifecycle, make their evolution more manageable, and their interrelationship clear.

The effectiveness can be improved by implementing automated techniques for Insulation, Security and Access Control, Lifecycle Management, Communication and Detailed Reporting.

The result of using effective configuration management should include improved productivity, reduced cost of production, and shorter time to deliver completed work.

What do CVSNT Version Numbers mean (2.5.03 vs 2.5.04)

V = major architecture changes
NN = significant architecture changes
XX = feature releases
BBBB = bug fixes

Note: from 2005 zero is no longer considered a valid number (ie: EVS is 3.1 not 3.0)

Eg: 1.11 to 2.0
major architecture changes, eg: ditching C for C++

2.x to 3.1
major architecture changes, eg: ditching RCS for Relational DB.

2.5 to 2.8
significant architecture changes, eg: ditching cvsservice/xinetd

2.0 to 2.5
significant architecture changes, eg: adding pluggable triggers

2.5.03 to 2.5.04
feature releases, eg: adding support for multiple repo servers

2.5.04 to 2.5.05
feature releases, eg: windows servers now always run in unicode (unix cvsnt servers have already done this for years)

2.5.04.3236 to 2.5.04.3510
bug fixes - may be critical bug fixes

Note:

• major architecture changes - CVSROOT scripts may require rewriting
• significant architecture changes - should be carefully planned (probably to coincide with OS upgrades)
• feature releases - upgrade should always have a rollback plan
• bug fixes - you should always be running the HIGHEST build

How do March Hare Software plan development of CVS Suite and CVSNT

• Q1: July -September
• Q2: October - December
• Q3: January - March
• Q4: April - June

This direction and these goals are always guided by our overall vision for CVS / CVSNT / EVS. Our planning is high level mostly conceptual, however usually includes some specific technical targets that we feel will provide a better platform for feature growth.

Issues such as reliability and performance are always considered but are not explicitly labelled or targetted at this level.

Each quarter the targets are further refined to include specific features or respond to market conditions and customer feedback.

How does the Open Source Community plan CVSNT and EVS development

The tree is equally open to all members of the community, both commercial and individual.

What releases of CVS Suite have March Hare planned for 2011/2012

The following releases of CVS Suite are planned:

• CVS Suite 2008 (2.5.03.2382 codeline) updates - 380 updates are already available - in future critical updates will be backported from CVS Suite 2009 for CVS Suite 2008 and other non-critical updates based on customer demand
• CVS Suite 2009 (2.8.01 codeline) codename Soolin initial release
  • New high performance server service improves performance of clients which issue many small commands, eg: Eclipse, SCCI etc.
  • Installation Wizard
• CVS Suite 2009R2 (2.8.01 codeline) updates
• CVS Suite 2010 (2.8.01 codeline) - minor upgrade
• CVS Suite 201? (2.8.0? codeline) - major client upgrade
  • CVS Suite Studio Team View
  • Other client upgrades
• CVS Suite 201? (2.8.0? codeline) - server upgrades
  • Improvement in cvs update performance
  • More high performance features in the high performance server service.

Should I upgrade to CVS Suite 2009R1?

The remainder of this FAQ applies to CVS Suite 2009R1 available since April 2010.

If you have any of the following software installed, we recommend you upgrade to CVS Suite 2009:

• CVS Suite 2009 Trial
• CVSNT 2.8.01.xxxx
• CVSNT 2.5.03.2382 (community edition)
• CVSNT 2.5.02.xxxx
• CVSNT 2.5.01.xxxx
• CVSNT 2.0.x (eg: 2.0.58 or 2.0.51 or 2.0.41)
• WinCVS 2.0.x or WinCVS 1.x
• TortoiseCVS 1.12, 1.10, 1.8 or 1.x

If you have any of the following software installed, we recommend you DO NOT upgrade to CVS Suite 2009:

• CVS Professional 2.5.03 (eg: 2.5.03.2757)
• CVS Suite 2008 (eg: 2.5.03.3736)
• CVSNT on HPUX or Solaris Sparc

The eBook "All About CVS" contains a detailed upgrade guide - all customers should review the upgrade planning guide before upgrading a production server.

NOTE: CVS Suite 2009 has been in Pre-Release since June 2010. This means that:

• We do NOT issue release notes for each build, just release notes for all of CVS Suite 2009.
• we recommend it for new installations, not upgrades to previous editions of CVS Suite.

During Pre-Release, the release notes for a new build can be produced by comparing the release notes for the build you have with the latest release note.

When CVS Suite moves from the status of Pre-Release to Release then:

• We issue a build specific release note for each new build
• We recommend all customers begin upgrade planning to the new release and issue an End-Of-Life plan for previous releases.

What features did March Hare Software deliver in CVSNT 2.5.05

March Hare Software delivered the following features in CVSNT 2.5.05 - this is the final release of the community edition of CVSNT:

Client:

• performance (fixed bugs in signature checks)
• ipv6 support
• cvs switch verb for changing sandbox CVSROOT when server has moved
• gserver fixes
• improved support for chinese filenames (stable release only, not in RC)

Server:

• Bug fixes

All users are advised to upgrade to CVSNT 2.8.0x (CVS Suite 2009 or later) as soon as possible to ensure the software remains up to date.

What features are March Hare Software Planning for CVSNT for Mac OS X

March Hare Software are looking to add another resource to our development team to assist in the delivery of enhancements to CVSNT for Mac OS X. Planned features include:

• Mac OS X System Preferences
• Mac OS X WorkspaceViewer
• Spotlight plugin (for repository server)
• Dashboard widget
• Sync integration

The timeframe of adding this resource will depend on growth of the CVSNT Mac community (both commercial and open source).

This plan is provided only for information. By publication of this plan March Hare Software do not warrant or guarantee these features or dates or versions in any way.

What features are March Hare Software Planning for EVS Windemere

March Hare Software are currently planning to deliver the following features in EVS Windemere (previously known as CVSNT 3.1.01):

• Atomic Commits
• Database backend (no more RCS files)
• RCS "interface" for legacy integrations
• Support for CVS/CVSNT/SVN and WebDAV clients

Additional features for EVS Windemere are planned to be announced in July 2007.

This plan is provided only for information. By publication of this plan March Hare Software do not warrant or guarantee these features or dates or versions in any way.

What priority do March Hare apply to support requests.

The severity levels are:

• Repository corruption
• Server Security
• Workspace corruption
• Server crash (core dump)
• Client crash (core dump)
• General Faults / Installation
• CVSNT client compatibility
• Non CVSNT client compatibility
• Enhancements
• Platform support

Can I move my version history from Visual SourceSafe, PVCS, ClearCase or Perforce to CVSNT?

Visual Source Safe, PVCS, ClearCase and Perforce are each excellent version control solutions each with many features, and each with unique features.

CVSNT is not an emulator designed to replace any of them. However these tools solve problems generally defined by the phrases version control and configuration management, and those are the same problems that CVSNT is designed to solve. Therefore in some situations it may be possible to switch one for the other and have very little impact on your business.

How many people use CVSNT?

Gartner research has published statistics in the past on Software Configuration Management Market Share based on license revenue, however we have been unable to find any research done based on use in the field.

Most other industry analysts use this same approach (eg: Worldwide Software Configuration Management Tools 2004 Vendor Shares", #204821, December 2006 [previously #33588, June 2005] by IDC). This research appears designed to assist vendors and investors in determining how much money is available in the marketplace for these tools and to which vendor the majority of the money is going. The research does not benefit the person who is choosing a tool based on popularity (in use by many people on a day to day basis) or effectiveness (has achieved productivity and reliability gains that software configuration management is designed to). In particular the studies:

• give a natural preference to software which is costly over software which is economical
• does not account at all for software implemented without a license cost
• provide a market share benefit to companies which sell software which is then later replaced due to implementation difficulties.

Gartner research have given us a quote for performing some study based on use in the field, however no budget has been allocated to fund this in 2005/2006. Furthermore it would not be possible to publish the results of this study since Gartner require a signed non-disclosure agreement from any person who views it or information distilled from it.

Built / executable copies of CVSNT are included in TortoiseCVS and WinCVS and also downloaded from the main March Hare web site. From these sites roughly 30,000 copies per week are downloaded. This does not include copies of CVSNT which are built from source in the "traditional open source" way or copies of any version which is in development or test (unstable).

The best research we have is incidental and that indicates that CVSNT is the most widely adopted versioning tool in use in the Software Development industry today.

Can I integrate CVSNT with some other software

March Hare Software can assist you in integrating your application with CVSNT by:

• Access to the CVSNT Development Manager, Product Manager and other technical staff
• Code samples of how to implement integration
• Features to make integrating easier
• Write the integration on your behalf

If your project is open source licensed (GPL or similar) then your best approach is to send a request for development assistance to the open source CVSNT newsgroup. To contact the newsgroup you can subscribe here or if you have a news browser installed you can click here.

If your project is commercially licensed or you wish for March Hare Software to provide some assistance then you will need to have a Professional Support contract. The correct level contract will depend on the amount of assistance you require, contact a sales representative for more information.

Can I create multiple synchronised repositories with CVSNT

March Hare Software have our own repository hosted in UK, Australia and the USA. A sales consultant will be able to assist you further.

Why do March Hare collect so much information when I download CVSNT?

The page http://march-hare.com/downloads/ is the only place you can download the community editions and the evaluation edition of UD6 because these installers require a product key to install and the main download page automatically will e-mail you this key.

The source code for CVSNT community editions can be downloaded from the project repository - see the project web site for details.

Are the commercial releases of CVS Suite the same as the free CVSNT?

The changes in the community editions of CVSNT are driven by the requirements of the open source developers, whereas the changes in the CVS Suite are driven by our customers. Features only available in CVS Suite include:

• CVS Suite High Performance Server Service
• Bugzilla, Mantis and Atlassian Jira Integration
• Multi-Site unison synchronisation
• Visual Studio Integration (SCCI)
• CVS Suite Studio - Graphical CVS Client
• Release Manager
• Install Guide / eBook
• Using CVS Suite with Eclipse guide
• Using CVS Suite with SQL Navigator and Oracle Guide

Generally this CVSNT Community Edition supports newer versions of Open Source Linux libraries and has cutting edge experimental features, and the CVS Suite works with and is tested with Commercial Linux, Windows and Unix distributions and is more stable and has features commercial software developers require.

Between CVSNT 2.0.51 and CVSNT 2.5.02 we did try and keep the two releases very similar - however from CVSNT 2.5.03 it became clear that the community of open source developers wanted to use much newer technologies (like libxml2 versus expat) than most commercial operating systems supported.

The source code for all versions of CVSNT are available from the CVSNT repository, and all builds are available at some time from the open source web site. However the open source CVSNT web site only keeps one build of CVSNT available at any time. Open source developers can "checkout" any version from the repository and build it at any time.

March Hare Software provide five levels of commercial support, and all levels have access to the latest software at the time of purchase.

Silver, Gold and Platinum Annual Software Maintenance and Support customers have access to the entire history of stable and patched releases of CVS Suite.

CVS Suite (no Annual Software Maintenance and Support) customers have access to the latest stable and patched versions at the time of purchase.

All Annual Software Maintenance and Support customers receive patched versions of CVSNT as frequently as every fortnight (but not usually so - since there are many fortnights with no bugs reported).

All CVS Suite customers also receive some plugins and client applications which are not licensed under the GPL and are not available for free. The source code for these is not available in the CVSNT repository.

Conversely not all versions of CVSNT are made available to professional and basic support customers. Releases of CVSNT made to customers undergo additional quality assurance and release procedures.

The following data was generated using David A. Wheelers SLOCCount:

• TOTAL SUITE CODE: 794,361 lines
• DIRECTLY FROM CVSNT PROJECT: 443,003 (56%) lines
• AVAILABLE IN SUITE ONLY (NON-GPL): 35,324 (4%) lines

Low Performance CVSNT versus High Performance CVS Suite

The commercial implementation is faster but also uses a manager process that is not open source. This provides:

• reduced lag on client performance while servers start
• allows the server processes to share information to improve performance

It is not possible to use CVSNT 2.8 Server without the manager process.

How much of the code is Free/Open Source

Therefore to help them we make a deliberate decision to keep a small but extremely useful part of the code non-open source.

We have NOT removed any features or documentation from the Community edition of CVSNT, but included in the CVS Suite these additional components:

• CVS Suite High Performance Server Service
• Bugzilla, Mantis and Atlassian Jira Integration
• Multi-Site unison synchronisation
• Visual Studio Integration (SCCI)
• CVS Suite Studio - Graphical CVS Client
• Release Manager
• Install Guide / eBook
• Using CVS Suite with Eclipse guide
• Using CVS Suite with SQL Navigator and Oracle Guide

NOTE: The majority of code in the CVSNT Project is Copyright March Hare Software Ltd, with some code Copyright March Hare Software Ltd and Tony Hoyle.

The following data was generated using David A. Wheelers SLOCCount and CVS Suite 2009:

• TOTAL SUITE CODE: 794,361 lines
• CVSNT PROJECT: 443,003 (56%) lines
• AVAILABLE IN SUITE ONLY (NON-GPL): 35,324 (4%) lines

CVSNT ONLY

• ansic: 224603 (55.09%)
• cpp: 123608 (30.32%)
• sh: 48791 (11.97%)
• asm: 3495 (0.86%)
• ada: 1681 (0.41%)
• perl: 1493 (0.37%)
• pascal: 1089 (0.27%)
• cs: 1008 (0.25%)
• python: 918 (0.23%)
• yacc: 805 (0.20%)
• sed: 181 (0.04%)
• lisp: 7 (0.00%)
• Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 407,679

cvsnt + winmerge + tortoisecvs + wincvs:

• cpp: 436878 (57.56%)
• ansic: 255095 (33.61%)
• sh: 50251 (6.62%)
• asm: 5570 (0.73%)
• perl: 2234 (0.29%)
• cs: 1887 (0.25%)
• ada: 1681 (0.22%)
• yacc: 1559 (0.21%)
• pascal: 1289 (0.17%)
• python: 962 (0.13%)
• php: 726 (0.10%)
• exp: 692 (0.09%)
• sed: 181 (0.02%)
• ruby: 25 (0.00%)
• lisp: 7 (0.00%)
• Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 759,037

COMMERCIAL SUITE CODE ONLY:

• cpp: 26524 (75.09%)
• sh: 8800 (24.91%)
• Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 35,324