Going retro: Learning CVS, coming from SVN

Question

I've used Subversion since (insert year from early previous decade) but now am at a company using CVS. There are plenty of how-to guides, tutorials, cheatsheets, etc for people going from old version control systems to newer, but what is there for the few of us heading the "wrong" way?

I'm looking for cheatsheets, tips, gotchas for current experienced developers comfortable and totally on board with svn, git, or other popular system. Do not want stuff for version control newbies, or essays extolling the virtues of CVS as compared to whatever was used back in the "64K RAM is plenty" days.

Answer 1

Good luck.

Since you're very experienced with Subversion, I'm going to recommend a reference you never would have thought of: the Subversion manual.

In an appendix, Subversion for CVS Users, they describe how to break bad CVS habits and start using SVN, as their goal is for Subversion to take over the CVS world.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to reverse-engineer this appendix. Read through it, smiling as you recall the halcyon days of atomic commits, but grimacing as you realize what branching will cost you now.

More seriously, the appendix will often review features in CVS, assuming that people are familiar with them, and then provide a link to the manual where the superior SVN feature is described. You just need to work backwards. You know what you want to do in your own head, and you know you used to do it this way, but you see there's this whole other way to do it. Then ask a co-worker (or read the CVS manual) to learn it in more depth.