Revision Control Systems

See also: Programming | Collaboration

Used to maintain different versions of a ‘something’. Especially handy for lone or collaborating software developers.



  • Meta-CVS is a version control system built around CVS, including better support for branching and merging, directory versioning, symbolic link and metadata.

  • Aegis | Sourceforge PageAegis is a transaction-based software configuration management system. It provides a framework within which a team of developers may work on many changes to a program independently, and Aegis coordinates integrating these changes back into the master source.
  • Subversion | GNU HomepageThe goal of the Subversion project is to build a version control system to replace CVS. Subversion now includes newline conversion and keyword expansion, and supports delivering diffs from the server to the client.
  • Shiela | GNU HomepageShiela is an access control and logging facility CVS. It hooks into CVS’s processing through the $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/xxxinfo callbacks and provides access control on a path and branch basis to particular repository users and user groups. Also, repository operations are monitored, accumulated, and logged. Logging messages can be configured individually on a module path and branch basis; messages can be saved to files and/or delivered by email.
  • prcs | GNU HomepagePRCS, the Project Revision Control System, is the front end to a set of tools that (like CVS) provide a way to deal with sets of files and directories as an entity, preserving coherent versions of the entire set. Its purpose is similar to that of SCCS, RCS, and CVS, but (according to its authors, at least), it is much simpler than any of those systems.
  • Arch | GNU Homepage – ‘arch’ is a revision control system with features that are ideal for projects with widely distributed development, concurrent support of multiple releases, and substantial amounts of development on branches. It is intended to replace CVS and corrects many mis-features of that system. ‘arch’ permits branching and merging across multiple, distributed, public and private repositories. arch has fancy features for merging branches. It cleanly handles renamed files and directories. It includes a web interface for browsing repository contents. It has a feature called “revision libraries” which can be used to get very fast and very convenient access to past revisions.
  • Automatic CVS Update | GNU PageAutomatic CVS Update (ACU) keeps checked-out copies of CVS modules up-to-date, even if they reside on a remote host. It uses ssh or rsh to log into the remote system which triggers a CVS update. It’s useful for Web development because it centers development effort in CVS and eliminates the need for FTP.
  • ccvssh | Sourceforge Page | GNU Page – ‘ccvssh’ is an external program called by cvs (via theĀ :ext: method) which connects to remote CVS pservers through an SSL connection to a stunnel daemon. It is a reimplementation of ‘cvssh’ in C, and is fast and easy to use.
  • Cervisia | Sourceforge Page | GNU PageCervisia is a graphical frontend for the CVS version control system. It runs with any window manager or desktop environment (not just KDE).

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