CVS (concurent version system) is a commandline tool that maintains the individual states (different versions) of files in a network (lan (local area network) or wan (wide area network)). Typically, cvs is installed on a server, the other computers are cvs-clients. User can independantly checkout files to their local system, hack away, and commit the changes back onto the server when done. Many users can work on the same files at a time because cvs recognizes overlapping changes and notifys the user of these conflicts. This check is done at commit time, except for the user running update whenever he likes. So cvs does not require continous network connection for working with it.
Furtheron cvs has the ability to maintain several project version trees, merge changes between individual versions into a third version, as well as returning a detailed list of the project activities. All in all a complex project maintenance tool, which is in use in many open source projects throughout the internet.
CrossVC is a graphical Interface for the cvs client commandline tool on the Unix, Mac OS X and Windows platform. It allows to load modules from a server (checkout), create modules on the server (import), as well as checking the state of directories and individual files or updating them. Basic operations like add, remove and commit are supported as matter of course, just like showing the actual differences between the server version and the local sandbox, graphical display of the version tree, and manifoldy graphical support of project maintenance. All actions are logged on the cvs server (configurable via history), and are therewith comprehensible.
To keep CrossVC independant of the cvs version, CrossVC uses the local but separat installed cvs and therewith always should work with the latest version.
After choosing a startup dir, the project-explorer searches the subdirectories for cvs projects, and displays these on the workbench. Now all functions on one/many files or whole directories can be accessed over pulldown menues or simply a right mouseclick. The state of the individual directories is continuously scanned by CrossVC. This means the symbol of the dir tells the user that there are for example still uncommited changes somewhere in the depth of a dir hierarchy, even without having opened them yet. So the project state is visualized right after a cvs status call. Completed with on-the-fly dir scanning, CrossVC is qualified for large projects with many thousand files. Because of the continuous efforts of network administrators, to encrease network security, CrossVC supports all standard cvs connection protocols. Proxy support is also available, this requires a patched cvs. This is of course available on our download page.
Because CrossVC does not affect the cvs internal project maintenance, a concurrent use with cvs commandline is possible. The function of the CrossVC dir state display is not impaired therewith.
Even though CrossVC graphically supports almost the whole cvs range of functions (and is continuously under development;-), it is easy to customize the GUI to the individual needs. Popup menues are freely configurable, while the menues always provide full feature access. An extra toolbar enables direct access to often used features.
In contrast to other programs this one is really easy to use ;-) .