Welcome Installation Guide FAQ Credits TortoiseCVS web site

#
TortoiseCVS Help

Version 0.42 - Don't Panic!

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It leaves me only fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
Above the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A E Houseman

## Welcome

TortoiseCVS lets you work with files under CVS version control directly from Windows Explorer. It's freely available under the GPL - you can copy it, modify the source code, or even sell it, as long as you make any changes to the source code available. It is heavily based on the source code for WinCVS, a great Windows client for CVS.
DISCLAIMER: TortoiseCVS comes with no warranty. It's also quite new. You might not want to use it with valuable data. Saying that, I use it every day with valuable data, and have had no problems which might cause loss of data. Most functionality uses the cvs2ntlib.dll which comes with the latest beta of WinCVS. So if you trust the latest WinCVS, it might be sensible to trust this.
Experience of both CVS and, for some features, WinCVS is probably necessary to make the best of TortoiseCVS at the moment.

## Installation

Installation: Extract the zip file to a temporary folder, and double click Setup.exe. Since TortoiseCVS is an Explorer extension you will have to reboot. As well as a new installation, this process will also update an existing installation of TortoiseCVS.

Windows NT/95 only: You might need to install the IE4 shell or desktop extensions to get a more recent version of Explorer. This is only a problem on Windows NT/95. To do this install IE4, and choose Yes to install the active desktop. Don't worry, you can turn off the actual active desktop later by right clicking on it. It's the new version of Explorer that we are after. If you've already installed IE5, you must uninstall it and then install IE4 with desktop extensions, and then install IE5 again. IE5 itself doesn't come with the desktop extensions. What a palaver.

Uninstallation: You won't be able to delete TortoiseShell.dll while Explorer has it loaded. To uninstall, first remove the registry entries by double clicking on Unregister.reg. Then log off and back in again, reboot, or force Explorer to respawn itself. You can now delete the TortoiseCVS folder.

## Quick Start

Load up the windows file explorer, right click on the folder that you would like to put a module in and choose CVS Checkout.

From then on you can Update, Commit, Add or perform Differences by right clicking on files and folders. You will also see the icon overlays within folders which are under CVS:

- Green - The file or folder is in CVS
- Red - You've changed the file
- Purple - Your changes conflict with someone else's
- Blue question mark - The file isn't in CVS and perhaps should be

There are some more options on the CVS submenu, including Remove.

Now go and read the Guide.

## Credits

TortoiseCVS was written by Francis Irving, heavily based on code by Alexandre Parenteau for WinCVS. Thanks to Alexandre for lots of support and help. And everyone else who worked on WinCVS.
Thanks to Ben Campbell for lots of code and help, to Gavin Buttimore for general support, and most fun of all to Nathan Thomas for Charlie, the logo. And thank you to everyone who has emailed me with help and support.
And thanks to the folk who made wxWindows and, of course!, CVS. Two excellent pieces of software.
You can email me at francis@flourish.org.