The official web site for CVS is www.cyclic.com.
Cyclic Software provides source code, informations and support for CVS.
Before reading this document, you should be familiar with CVS.
CvsGui is a set of little applications with a user interface for several platforms (right now only Mac and Windows 32). It is developped and used mostly in Strata Inc. by several developers.
The user interface is not designed to replace the command lines of cvs, but is provided in order to help people to get started with cvs and to take advantages of platforms capabilities (move to trash, multi-files picker, improved interface...).
While developping GuiCvs, we concentrate on speed and reliability.
The main reason is because we had a very bad time by using a commercial product named ...$ :-\<.
The second reason is due to cvs itself : cvs is incredibly powerfull, fast, well documented and has a great support with Cyclic Software.
MacCvs was the first version of CvsGui : we finished the port of cvs on Macintosh by fixing bugs and adding features.
Then we did the WinCvs port so the Windows developper can have the same features than the Mac developpers.
Finnally why not in the future a kdecvs, qtcvs, wtcvs, gtkcvs ? You will find a hacking section explaining the common architecture of CvsGui and why it's so easy to make new ports by using the CvsGui architecture.
None. That's because CvsGui uses the cvs code and inherits of all the features of cvs.
CvsGui is designed to add on the top of cvs some cool stuff that people wants. You'll find an ISO8559 encoding support, MacBinary support, extras features and more. But we still try to keep the cvs feeling.
We try to keep in touch with them and look for the next version they'll provide. We think we'll be able before the announcement of the next version of cvs to provide some patches useful for all the platforms.
jcvs is a cvs client implemented in Java which has his own format. jcvs is not compatible with MacCVS.
MacCvsClient and MacCvsPro are two cvs client implemented in C++ using PowerPlant with a very nice user interface. Like jcvs, MacCvsClient and MacCvsPro have their own format and are not compatibles with MacCvs.
MacCvs uses directly the cvs code (C code) : so it inherits all the capabilities of cvs. jcvs, MacCvsClient and MacCvsPro use a private code so you can't expect some features to be implemented in thses clients, unless the author implements it (the Mac resources support, the patch support, the compression support, the kerberos support and so on). But you may find in MacCVS some ideas stolen from all of these excellents programs.
Hey, good news : Apple works on a version of cvs for Rhapsody. Should be nice to have a MacCVS for it, isn't it ;-> ?
Note: We are using currently MacCVS on Rhapsody without any kind of problem using the Blue Box.