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Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS Review by Ray Salemi

Chatty but Misses Information

I bought this book to come up to speed on CVS for a new project and I had a mixed experience with it.

I like the author's simple examples. For example, using a short text list of colors as sample files instead of source code. These made it easy to focus on the author's intent without getting confused by the example.

However, I had a problem in that the book never really compared CVS to other tools. I have always used source control tools that locked other users out of a file when you edited it: RCS, Clearcase, etc. So I found myself flipping through the book trying to figure out how to do a "get" command. I wish there had been a section describing the CVS philosophy of letting everyone edit and only fixing the merges.

I found the author's chatty style to be distracting. But, on the other hand, I am now successfully using CVS from using this book. So 3 stars.