So, for a long time I was a SourceSafe devotee. There is nothing I would recommend more to a person to use, and always use, a good source control tool. However, my new job uses CVS pretty religously, so I needed to figure it out. It is defintely not as easy as SS, but, the more I use it, the more I like it. Plus, you can't beat the price (in other words, it's free.) For more information, see http://www.cvshome.org/.

My boss, David An, shared this tip today and I thought I'd pass it on...

CVS has the ability to auto-expand variables as files are committed. Thus, you can put the variable $Id$ (for instance) into a comment within your code, and it will be automatically expanded upon committing that file. This is great for quickly knowing which version of a particular file is in place.

So, my first file looked like this (it was a JavaScript file, should work for anything):

// here's a comment

I added the variable:

// here's a comment
// version info from CVS: $Id$

and committed it ... my file suddenly became:

// here's a comment
// version info from CVS: $Id: gotolink.js,v 1.5 2003/03/19 17:56:03 davida Exp $

and committed it again, to get:

// here's a comment
// version info from CVS: $Id: gotolink.js,v 1.6 2003/03/19 17:56:58 davida Exp $