9. CVS for MS Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP

9.1 Method 1: Using VNC, Samba

It is VERY STRONGLY recommended that you use Samba(on cdrom samba*.rpm) and a VNC viewer (or PC X Server) on MS Windows 95/NT. With samba the Unix/Linux CVS server will be like a file server. By using Samba the remote directory on Unix will look like a local folder on MS Windows on the local disk. Install samba*.rpm on Unix/Linux server(which has the CVS repository) and install the VNC viewer (or PC X server) on MS Windows 95/NT/2000/XP desktop. Using a VNC (or PC X server) you can easily log on to the Unix box and check-out/check-in the files. And you can use tools like Java Visual Cafe or Java JBuilder on MS Windows to edit the files located in Unix/Linux folder(via samba). After editing, you can check-in the files to Unix through VNC or PC X-server.

Advantages of using CVS on Linux/Unix via MS Windows are:

• Only one single Linux File server (CVS server) can serve many MS Windows clients.
• A Linux file server (CVS) is very robust, secure and reliable
• Only one UPS (uninterrupted power supply) battery is required for a linux server.
• Linux can serve as MS Windows folder through Samba package.
• A Linux file server (CVS) supports centralized backups via tools like BRS, Arkeia, Bru mirrors at angelfire, geocities, virtualave, Fortunecity, Freewebsites, Tripod, 101xs, 50megs,
• A Linux file server (CVS) requires just one small server room which can air-conditioned and dust free. Small room keeps the cooling/heating costs down.
• A Linux file server (CVS) provides security via Unix groups and user id authentication

The best tool for remote access is VNC. The VNC is lightweight and is much better than the PC X servers. The VNC is very strongly recommended over PC X server. The remote access methods available are:

• VNC (Virtual Network Computing) at http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc VNC is not an X-server but can display the remote Unix on Windows. VNC is the best tool in the market for remote access, it is very lightweight and is a very powerful software.
• Get VNC rpms from rpmfind.
• The best Window manager for VNC is QVWM which is like MS Windows 98/NT/2000/XP interface, get it from http://www.qvwm.org.
• After starting vncserver, you can start the vncviewer program on clients like MS Windows, Mac or Linux.
• See also the List of X11 Windows Managers.

Compiling qvwm on Solaris : On Solaris you should install the following packages which you can get from http://sun.freeware.com - xpm, imlib, jpeg, libungif, giflib, libpng, tiff. And you can download the binary package for solaris from http://www.qvwm.org.

Or you can download the qvwm source for solaris from http://www.qvwm.org and compile it using gcc.

Troubleshooting compile: You should put unsigned long before arg in usleep() usleep((unsigned long) 10000)

The following PC X servers are available:

• Low cost, best and small size (3 MB) http://www.microimages.com and click on "X-Server (MI/X) for Windows"
• Humming bird eXceed 14 MB http://www.hummingbird.com
• Starnet 5.2 MB http://www.starnet.com

  There are more than 2 dozen vendors for X servers for Windows:

• X-win pro 6.34 MB http://www.labf.com
• X-WinPro http://lab-pro.com
• X-Link http://www.xlink.com/x.htm
• Xoftware http://www.age.com

  University resources:

• University listings http://www.et.byu.edu/support/pc/xterm.html
• Floppy based PC "X server" http://mirriwinni.cse.rmit.edu.au/~brad/co338/sem1/floppy.html

9.2 Method 2: Using Cygwin

You can install the Redhat Cygwin and install the CVS clients and SSH packages via Cygwin. With cygwin the Windows 95/NT/2000/XP will be like a Unix client. Bring up the cygwin bash shell prompt and you can access the remote CVS server. With cygwin the Windows 95/NT will be like any other Linux CVS client.

9.3 CVS exe for Windows 95/NT/2000/XP

You can install and run CVS on MS Windows directly. Download cvsnt from http://www.cvsnt.org. See the installation instructions and other documents of CVS on NT/2000 at http://www.devguy.com/fp/cfgmgmt/cvs/cvs_admin_nt.htm#install.

9.4 Windows 95/NT/2000/XP FTP Tools

You can also use the ftp tools on MS Windows to transfer files from a Unix/Linux (CVS repository) to windows:

• Go to Tucows and search "ftp tools" for MS Windows http://www.tucows.com

9.5 Visual Cafe(Java), JBuilder, MS Visual C++, HTML files

Using Samba and a PC X server it is possible to use CVS on MS Windows platform. And the tools like Symantec Visual Cafe (Java), Inprise JBuilder, MS Visual C++ and others are easily supported by CVS.

You can also store the HTML files on a CVS repository via Samba and easily access them from MS Windows.

9.6 Samba Admin tool

To administer samba use the admin tools from http://www.samba.org. Go here and click on "GUI Interfaces Tools".