Providing a common interface to SVN and CVS

Question

SVN and CVS are two very different systems that aim to address the same basic issue - source control.

They both work in distinct ways, so it's probably difficult to deal with them exactly the same.

What I'm wondering is, would it be conceivable to develop a programming library or API that exposes the same interface, but under the hood, can be set up to work with either an SVN or CVS repository?

I'm aiming to develop such a library in either .NET or Java (most likely .NET), but I wanted to get some thoughts on how feasible this would be, and if there's a better way to approach the problem.

The context of this is: I'm building a web-based service that will involve source control hosting, and I want to support both SVN and CVS so as to serve the largest amount of developers possible.

Answer 1

The MSSCCI API does something very similar:

http://alinconstantin.homeip.net/webdocs/scc/msscci.htm

The MSSCCI tries to make all source controls look the same from the perspective of the IDE.

Answer 2

Personally I would ignore CVS for a new product. My feeling would be that the enormous extra effort to coerce it into looking like SVN would be better spent on other other stuff. I don't know your market, so I might be wrong, but that's got to be worth thinking about.

Answer 3

viewvc lets you browse svn and cvs repositories. maybe there is an existing product which will already do what you want?