Good tutorials on code management?

Question

I have been coding since a long time but I have never ever used the code management systems like CVS or SVN.

Can you please suggest any guides which start from basics and then go with the concepts of the individual software and their intricacies.

Answer 1

A really basic one for the really good darcs can be found here.

You should be ready in under 20 minutes!

Having done the little tutorial above, see the links to further documentation. If you understood the concept, nearly every darcs command can be found in the darcs cheat sheet (only one page!).

It may look like darcs was a really basic version control system but in fact it supports unique features none of the other VCS (I know) have (e.g. patch cherry picking without loosing the patches identity).

Answer 2

Eric Sink's Source Control HOWTO is a nice (non tool-specific) introduction, although I don't know if it's up-to-date with the latest DVCSs.

Answer 3

Have you read the SVN book?

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/

Answer 4

I would start off with reading the Wikipedia articles on the two

CVS can be found here

Subversion can be found here

Then for more detail about Subversion you can look at the red book here.

I don't know of an equivalent for CVS.

Finally for an overview of version control you can start at Wikipedia here.

Answer 5

My favorite document on the subject remains High-level Best Practices in Software Configuration Management. This is an excellent white paper that I still use as reference whenever I need to introduce colleagues to good SCM practices. Here is the abstract:

When deploying new SCM (software configuration management) tools, implementers sometimes focus on perfecting fine-grained activities, while unwittingly carrying forward poor, large-scale practices from their previous jobs or previous tools. The result is a well-executed blunder. This paper promotes some high-level best practices that reflect the authors' experiences in deploying SCM.