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Last modified: 16-06-2020 |
Closed-source, Windows-based, easy-to-use SCM from Component Software. Uses the standard RCS file format. A one-user version is available for free (CS-RCS Basic), a multiple-user version is available for $ (CS-RCS Pro), both versions being able to access a local CVS repository; An add-on (CS-CVS) is available to connect to a remote CVS repository.
Is apparently based on NetBIOS, so don't expect usable performances over WAN links, in which case you should look into the CS-CVS add-on. Also, CS-RCS doesn't seem to allow concurrent editing, which will be a problem for bigger teams.
Run the EXE, select Master Setup, followed by Personal
A computer on the LAN has a shared drive to host the repository. From the host whose owner will act as CS-RCS administrator, run the install EXE, select Master Setup, followed by Workgroup, and give the destination path for the repository root, eg. \\Server\RCS or R:\RCS.
To install CS-RCS on other worstations, ie. regular users of CS-RCS, run the EXE, select Workstation Setup, and aim at the shared drive where the repository has been installed.
Just run the EXE. By default, CS-RCS installs its binaries under Drive:\Program Files\ComponentSoftware\CS-RCS\, and its repository under Drive:\RCS.
Two methods are available to add files to the repository:
Launch Windows Explorer, right-click on a file that you know has been added to the CS repository, and select "Check-out". In a Workstation setup, a file that is marked as Archived if it is currently available for check-out by any user. A is marked as "Locked" if it belongs to the user, ie. only this user can perform a check-out, and other users will see this file as "Blocked".
Note: The Check-out option is disabled if you installed the Personal, ie. single-user version of CS-RCS. This is because in this case, CS-RCS does not have to protect files from concurrent access. In this case, you can modify any file that is under source-control, and just choose Check-in when you're done, so that CS-RCS saves the changes in the repository. The Check-out option is available in the case where you modified a file, but haven't performed a Check-in : In this case, choosing Check-out is the way to tell CS-RCS to erase the changes you made but didn't save, by replacing the modified version with the previous version, as currently available in the repository
Once you're through working with a file that lives in the repository, launch Windows explorer, right-click on the file, and select "Check-in".
This is used to compare two versions of a file in the repository, by default the latest version with its immediate previous version: Right-click on the file in Windows Explorer, and select "Revision History"
Organizing files into projects is not required by CS-RCS, but makes things easier if you more than a few files in the repository.
Launch Document Explorer, select the files, right-click, and select Delete. You will need to perform this task twice (as a security measure, I assume.)
I'd rather use FileCompare32 or BeyondCompare.
You can download release 2.5 which has less features but handles bigger files better. Warning: I didn't succeed in overwriting CSDiff 3.0 with 2.5 because CS-RCS was using RCS_CMN.DLL; Ignoring this error caused other problems (ie. selecting Revision History triggered an error.)