Working With CVS and Visual Studio
I have a growing stable of projects using a mix of VS 2003 and 2005, and various source code control systems: VSS (both by itself and via Source On Site); TFS; SVN; and now, a client that uses CVS. It is getting … interesting to come up with configurations that work for everyone.
I’ve had both VS 2003 and 2005 connected as a TFS client for a couple of months now, and it works smoothly. CVS has proved to be more problematic. I’ve scoured the net for Visual Studio plug-ins for CVS, and the only viable one I’ve found (meaning, the only one that has been maintained in the past two to four years) is from PushOK. Even there, my predecessor on this project indicated he’d had quite a challenge getting it set up and in fact found an older release less problematic than the current release.
I tried installing PushOK’s plug-in but it hosed my TFS setup, so I uninstalled PushOK, repaired the TFS client, and went to a fallback position for now: I’ve installed Tortoise CVS, which integrates CVS operations into Windows Explorer. I’ve used Tortoise SVN before, and found it quite a solid package. Tortoise CVS has not disappointed me either. It’s not as convenient as tight VS integration, but it works and works well.
If anyone can recommend a solid CVS plug-in for VS, I’m all ears!
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I was in the same boat last year, and in my web meanderings I eventually found TamTam CVS SCC. Seems to be actively developed, and in my experience it works well. Might be worth a look.
Bob responds: Thanks, but the problem with TamTam is that it requires a specific CVS server (CVSNT) which my client isn’t using.
Comment by Chris Coughlin — May 14, 2007 @ 6:12 am
I’ve used PushOK for a couple years with Visual Studio 2003 to connect to CVS. It worked OK, but was a bit slow and occasionally did some weird things. Another team here decided to just use WinCVS instead, which seemed to work well for them.
We’ve since switched to TFS for our source control. I found that even TFS source control was a bit wonky with Visual Studio 2003, particularly with branches.
I think that Visual Studio 2003 just doesn’t work well with integrated source control.
Comment by Paul Lefebvre — May 23, 2007 @ 9:00 am
TamTam will work with any CVS server. It uses the client portion of CVSNT to talk with the server. Install CVSNT first, you can do a custom install and leave out the server component if you want. Then install TamTam.
I just set up TamTam to connect to our CVS repository which is running on an IBM AIX server.
Comment by Chris Dewane — July 19, 2007 @ 8:46 am