Version Management with CVS - the CVS manual by Per Cederqvist et al. Paperback (6"x9"), 216 pages, 8 figures ISBN 0954161718 RRP £19.95 ($29.95) Get a printed copy>>>

Version Management with CVS Buy the book here! >>> learn more

K Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual

Neither CVS nor this manual is perfect, and they probably never will be. If you are having trouble using CVS, or think you have found a bug, there are a number of things you can do about it. Note that if the manual is unclear, that can be considered a bug in the manual, so these problems are often worth doing something about as well as problems with CVS itself.

For problems with this printed copy of the manual, please contact the publisher at info at network-theory.co.uk. Any comments or corrections will be passed on to the CVS mantainers as appropriate.

• If you want someone to help you and fix bugs that you report, there are companies which will do that for a fee. Two such companies are:

  Ximbiot
  319 S. River St.
  Harrisburg, PA  17104-1657
  USA
  Email: info@ximbiot.com
  Phone: (717) 579-6168
  Fax:   (717) 234-3125
  http://ximbiot.com/
  

  and,

  Jim Hyslop
  Dreampossible Inc.  
  Toronto
  Canada
  Email: jhyslop@dreampossible.ca
  Phone: (647) 223-8971
  Fax:   (416) 461-4672
  http://www.dreampossible.ca/
  

• If you got CVS through a distributor, such as an operating system vendor or a vendor of free software CD-ROMs, you may wish to see whether the distributor provides support. Often, they will provide no support or minimal support, but this may vary from distributor to distributor.
• If you have the skills and time to do so, you may wish to fix the bug yourself. If you wish to submit your fix for inclusion in future releases of CVS, see the file HACKING in the CVS source distribution. It contains much more information on the process of submitting fixes.
• There may be resources on the net which can help. A good place to start is:

  http://cvs.nongnu.org/
  

  If you are so inspired, increasing the information available on the net is likely to be appreciated. For example, before the standard CVS distribution worked on Windows 95, there was a web page with some explanation and patches for running CVS on Windows 95, and various people helped out by mentioning this page on mailing lists or newsgroups when the subject came up.
• It is also possible to report bugs to bug-cvs at nongnu.org. Note that someone may or may not want to do anything with your bug report--if you need a solution consider one of the options mentioned above. People probably do want to hear about bugs which are particularly severe in consequences and/or easy to fix, however. You can also increase your odds by being as clear as possible about the exact nature of the bug and any other relevant information. The way to report bugs is to send email to bug-cvs at nongnu.org. Note that submissions to bug-cvs at nongnu.org may be distributed under the terms of the GNU Public License, so if you don't like this, don't submit them. There is usually no justification for sending mail directly to one of the CVS maintainers rather than to bug-cvs at nongnu.org; those maintainers who want to hear about such bug reports read bug-cvs at nongnu.org. Also note that sending a bug report to other mailing lists or newsgroups is not a substitute for sending it to bug-cvs at nongnu.org. It is fine to discuss CVS bugs on whatever forum you prefer, but there are not necessarily any maintainers reading bug reports sent anywhere except bug-cvs at nongnu.org.

People often ask if there is a list of known bugs or whether a particular bug is a known one. The file BUGS in the CVS source distribution is one list of known bugs, but it doesn't necessarily try to be comprehensive. Perhaps there will never be a comprehensive, detailed list of known bugs.

Other books from the publisher

Network Theory publishes books about free software under free documentation licenses. Our current catalogue includes the following titles:

• Comparing and Merging Files with GNU diff and patch by David MacKenzie, Paul Eggert, and Richard Stallman (ISBN 0-9541617-5-0) $19.95 (£12.95) This manual describes how to compare and merge files using GNU diff and patch. It includes an extensive tutorial that guides the reader through all the options of the diff and patch commands. Later chapters cover powerful time-saving techniques such as automatic merging of divergent branches of a source tree. This is a printed copy of the official GNU diffutils manual. It documents all the diffutils programs (diff, cmp, sdiff, diff3), plus GNU patch. For each copy of this manual sold, $1 is donated to the Free Software Foundation.

• GNU Bash Reference Manual by Chet Ramey and Brian Fox (ISBN 0-9541617-7-7) $29.95 (£19.95) This manual is the definitive reference for GNU Bash, the standard GNU command-line interpreter. GNU Bash is a complete implementation of the POSIX.2 Bourne shell specification, with additional features from the C-shell and Korn shell. For each copy of this manual sold, $1 is donated to the Free Software Foundation.

• An Introduction to GCC by Brian J. Gough, foreword by Richard M. Stallman. (ISBN 0-9541617-9-3) $19.95 (£12.95) This manual provides a tutorial introduction to the GNU C and C++ compilers, gcc and g++. Many books teach the C and C++ languages, but this book explains how to use the compiler itself. Based on years of observation of questions posted on mailing lists, it guides the reader straight to the important options of GCC. Concisely written, with numerous easy-to-follow "Hello World" examples, this book features a special foreword by Richard M. Stallman, principal developer of GCC and founder of the GNU Project.

• An Introduction to Python by Guido van Rossum and Fred L. Drake, Jr. (ISBN 0-9541617-6-9) $19.95 (£12.95) This tutorial provides an introduction to Python, an easy to learn object oriented programming language. For each copy of this manual sold, $1 is donated to the Python Software Foundation.

• Python Language Reference Manual by Guido van Rossum and Fred L. Drake, Jr. (ISBN 0-9541617-8-5) $19.95 (£12.95) This manual is the official reference for the Python language itself. It describes the syntax of Python and its built-in datatypes in depth, This manual is suitable for readers who need to be familiar with the details and rules of the Python language and its object system. For each copy of this manual sold, $1 is donated to the Python Software Foundation.

• GNU Octave Manual by John W. Eaton (ISBN 0-9541617-2-6) $29.99 (£19.99) This manual is the definitive guide to GNU Octave, an interactive environment for numerical computation with matrices and vectors. For each copy sold $1 is donated to the GNU Octave Development Fund.

• GNU Scientific Library Reference Manual--Second Edition by M. Galassi, et al (ISBN 0-9541617-3-4) $39.99 (£24.99) This reference manual is the definitive guide to the GNU Scientific Library (GSL), a numerical library for C and C++ programmers. The manual documents over 1,000 mathematical routines needed for solving problems in science and engineering. All the money raised from the sale of this book supports the development of the GNU Scientific Library.

• An Introduction to R by W.N. Venables, D.M. Smith and the R Development Core Team (ISBN 0-9541617-4-2) $19.95 (£12.95) This tutorial manual provides a comprehensive introduction to GNU R, a free software package for statistical computing and graphics.

• The R Reference Manual--Base Package (Volumes 1 & 2) by the R Development Core Team (ISBN 0-9546120-0-0 and 0-9546120-1-9) $69.95 each (£39.95 each) These volumes are the complete reference manual for the base package of GNU R, a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. The main commands of the base package of R are described in volume one, while the other functions (such as graphics) are described in volume two. For each set of manuals sold, $10 is donated to the R Foundation.

All titles are available for order from bookstores worldwide.

Sales of the manuals fund the development of more free software and documentation.

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