WorldForge Tips for using WinCVS

Q: What is WinCVS / CvsGui?
CvsGui (formerly known as WinCVS) is a project for creating a GUI front end for CVS. There exists Windows, Mac, and unix ports of it. It's available at http://www.wincvs.org/
Q: What settings should I use with WinCVS?
The following settings can be used with the World Forge CVS. Binary files should download correctly with them. The WinCVS version they were tested with is 1.1b15.

In Admin->Preferences->Globals:

  • "Checkout Read-Only" This makes the downloaded files read-only. Wether to check it is up to you (I have it unchecked).
  • "Supply control when adding files" This should be checked. It makes WinCVS check if a file is binary or text before adding it.
  • "Quiet mode" Up to you (I have it unchecked).
  • "Use TCP/IP compression" Probably not needed (I have it unchecked)
  • "Dirty files support" Don't know about this one. I have it unchecked.
  • "Prune empty directories" This makes WinCVS skip empty directories when downloading. Wether to enable it is up to you (I have it checked).
  • "Logout automatically" Up to you (I have it unchecked).
  • "Checkout text files with the unix LF" Checked. I think this might have something to do with corrupted binary downloads (if WinCVS does CRLF<->LF conversion always when this is off, even for binary files).

In Admin->Preferences->General:

  • "CVSROOT" This should be
    :pserver:MyWFAccountName@cvs.worldforge.org:/home/cvspsrv/worldforge

    (use your WF CVS account name above, or cvsanon for read-only access. The password for cvsanon is cvsanon.)
  • "Authentication" Select "passwd file on the cvs server"
  • "Use version" Select "cvs 1.10 (Standard)"

In Admin->Preferences->WinCvs:

  • "HOME folder" This is just for storing passwords, not neccesarily the cvs tree. For example: "C:\CVSHome".

Also remember to add binary files using the Add binary file command, it is shown in the toolbar as a document with a red plus and "01" under the plus.

Q: How do I use WinCVS?
To get more information about how to use WinCVS, check out the WinCVS documentation.

For a good quickstart, try the WinCVS Daily Use Guide

Current maintainer of the WinCvs FAQ: zzorn (zzorn _at_ iki _dot_ fi).