We're currently using WinCVS but it's slow and has no merge dialog. I'm looking for something like Eclipse's Team Synchronize (so people can see what they'll get before they update).
What do you suggest? TortoiseCVS with WinMerge?
Note: OSS preferred :)
On windows, definitely using Tortoise CVS and WinMerge will meet your needs. I also think it would be a good idea to learn how to do some operations with the command line too.
First: Strictly speaking, none of the tools quoted here so far are CVS clients. They're all "just" GUI frontends on top of the CVSNT commandline client (IIRC only SmartCvs uses a plain CVS client).
So, I'd be interested to hear what particular operations you think are slow in WinCvs. The real bottleneck is usually the CVS protocol itself and that will behave the same regardless of which GUI frontend you use.
Also, what exactly do you mean by "has no merge dialog"?
WinCvs integrates nicely with WinMerge (also as conflict editor).
And if you were talking about executing Merge operations you use the Update command which has a "Merge options" tab...
For previewing updates there are also several approaches in WinCvs: If you just want to see which files would get updated you can use the Query Update command (cvs -n up) or if you want the details you can simply Diff (using WinMerge) against HEAD (also works on multiple files and folders).
I've had both Tortoise and WinCvs installed for years but usually find that I do not use Tortoise except when I feel guilty about not getting what all the fuss is about... ;)
It's all a matter of taste I guess, especially whether you prefer an integrated solution that tries not to get in the way over a standalone app that forces you to make conscious decisions about your version control tasks.
WinCvs for me does all I want and more, but then I'm probably considered a power user and a heavily biased one at that as I used to be a cvsgui mailing list moderator and FAQ author and also wrote many of the stock macros.
Then again, there hasn't really been any active development on WinCvs for quuuuiiiite some time... :(