What is CVS?

CVS is stand for Concurrent Versions System, or Concurrent Versioning System CVS is a version (or revision) control system In technical term, it is a software tool, which helps in keeping track of all revisions and releases of a project's source code. (for each change: who, when, and why) is open-source and free

Why it is required?
Modern day software development or any field of study or development, involves a collective effort from multiple peoples for the speedy and efficient execution of work The multiple team members of a software development environment may have access to the same source, it becomes really unmanageable to track changes made by different users. Thus, a system is required which can be effectively used to track the changes and contribute towards collaborative development. Version Control System is one such system.

Why CVS?
Several methods for tracking contribution and changes made by different users #1: Manual merging and coordination
It is not convenient when number of users are very large.

#2: Revision Control System (RCS), Source Code Control System (SCCS)
It manages individual files but not whole projects. (currently in use)

#3: Concurrent development (CVS)

it manages both individual files as well as whole projects.

What does CVS do?

Uses a clientserver architecture.
Server(repository) stores entire history of each file. Clients connect to the server in order to read or edit file.

Allows multiple people to work simultaneously. Enables retrieval of old systems. Helps to manage different versions, releases. Works well over LAN, WAN (server/client). To avoid the possibility of conflict with each others work, the server only accepts changes made to the most recent version of a file. Works fine for any ASCII file, but limited support for binary files.
Treats files as text by default.

Problem with binary files.

For example, if someone else checked in a new version of a file, you may wish to look at what they changed and determine whether their changes are good. For text files, CVS provides this functionality via the cvs diff command. For binary files, it may be possible to extract the two revisions and then compare them with a tool external to CVS (for example, word processing software often has such a feature).

How does it works?

The heart of any version control system is a Centralized Repository, which contains the source code or documents on which versioning needs to be done. There are two different models on which these version control systems work. These are 1. Lock-Modify-Unlock Model 2. Copy-Modify-Merge Model

Lock-Modify-Unlock Model
In Lock-Modify-Unlock Model, when a developer wants to modify a particular file, he obtains a copy of that file from the centralized repository. At the same time, he locks the file on the repository to prevent the write access to other users. After making the changes to the obtained copy, developer updates the repository with the latest version and releases the lock. The file after unlocking is again accessible for modifications by other users. The user can obtain an editable version of the file, only if there is no existing lock on that file.

Copy-Modify-Merge Model
In this model, each developer can obtain a local copy of editable version of the file from the centralized repository. Each developer can freely edit their local copy and once they are done they merge these changes to the existing file in the repository. In this process, there is no file locking involved and so it allows developers to work on the same file simultaneously. In case there is conflict while updating a file on the repository, the system informs the developer about the conflicts.