CVS is a widely used source control system. Before you can read the sip-communicator Repository, you must be registered as an “Observer” for the project at https://sip-communicator.dev.java.net. While you are registering, you can follow the link to a help page for accessing the CVS Repository using command line tools.

To build and test sip-communicator for the first time, you will have to create a “Sandbox” on your own computer. The Sandbox is created and filled with the entire CVS Repository contents for the project. The Sandbox will be created as a new directory with the same name as the project, e.g.

 cvs checkout sip-communicator-1-0-draft

will create a new directory (anchored at your current directory) called “sip-communicator” and fill it with the appropriate subdirectories and source files. It will also create special directories (all called “CVS”) to hold control information.

Once you have a Sandbox, you can use CVS at any time to update the contents of your Sandbox with any changes that have been made to the Repository. You simply change directory so that you are positioned just inside the Sandbox and then enter the command:

 cvs update -d

The CVS server will be contacted and the contents of the control directories will be compared to check for recent changes. Each source file will then be listed and, if it needs to be updated, and flagged to tell you what kind of update was performed.

If you would like to know more about using CVS, then this http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/cvsbook.html is a good place to start learning about the command line commands and options.

Author: Brian Burch