Version Control Blog

Launchpad.net is the system for collaboration, project management and code hosting for free software. It provides source repository hosting, bug tracker, a place to discuss project goals and features (called “blueprints”), translation management service, and the knowledge base. I won’t delve into details, but what caught my attention is that launchpad.net allows to make a read-only mirrors for Bazaar, Subversion and CVS repositories, and track code progress by subscribing to commits on any branch of that repository. Andy Wingo says:

Launchpad offers a web-based repository browser, including changesets, and offers the ability to subscribe to any branch it knows about. You get emails on distributed commits. This is a beautiful thing! Anyone who has worked with distributed VCS’s has probably had the feeling that they are seeing development through a keyhole, that there’s a whole world out there that’s not easily visible or comprehensible. Launchpad offers the possibility of tying together the various development branches out there in the wild in one place, effectively removing the last advantage of centralized version control.

Go to Launchpad.net. (via wingolog.org: “Launchpad”)

According to joint press-release, “CollabNet, Inc. the leading provider of collaborative software development solutions, and VA Software Corporation (Nasdaq: LNUX), today announced the execution and closing of an asset purchase transaction whereby CollabNet purchased the SourceForge Enterprise Edition business from VA Software in consideration for an equity ownership stake in CollabNet.” SourceForge Enterprise Edition supports CVS, Subversion and Perforce out of the box, and also provides possibility for integration with other SCM tools. Read more at Press Release: “CollabNet® and VA Software Sign Asset Purchase Agreement for Acquisition of SourceForge® Enterprise Edition Business by CollabNet” (via LWN.net)

“Open Source Development with CVS” by Karl Fogel and Moshe Bar is one of the obligatory books to mention here. Of course, CVS is becoming somewhat irrelevant these days (except for the public project hosting services, where it prevails), but this book is of moderate size (368 pages), packed with useful information (if you still have to use CVS and wish to upgrade your knowledge somewhat), written by world-famous developers (Karl Fogel of CVS and Subversion fame, Moshe Bar of openMosix, Xen and KVM fames), and is available freely on the Internet (under the GNU GPL). Book covers CVS basics, repository administration, and some advanced (for CVS world) features. It contains extensive CVS reference, has many tips and troubleshooting advices, and briefly describes various third-party tools which make the CVS more useful. Read it online: Karl Fogel, Moshe Bar “Open Source Development with CVS”; download in PDF form; see the book’s official site. Buy at Amazon: Open Source Development with CVS. More books on version control and SCM: Version Control Blog Library.

Christian Neukirchen describes a useful procedure for how to set up tracking of foreign CVS repository using Git, cvsup and cvsps 2.1. He uses the Ruby CVS repository as an example. The resulting GIT repository takes 29 megabytes and contains entire Ruby development history for eight years. Read more at Tracking the Ruby CVS with Git. P.S.: I had to install newer cvsps, and to edit the CVSROOT/config file, removing LockDir config option. Give git-cvsimport a -v flag to see what it is doing.