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CVS and CHESS SUPERB-IT

All coding, data, writing, and presentations will be stored in a Concurrent Versioning System (CVS) repository on a CHESS server. There are two usages for CVS in the CHESS SUPERB-IT project:

• one that manages source code, project information, posters, reports, and technical information. The CVS repository for this information is on source.eecs.berkeley.edu (see "Using CVS to manage your technical information").
• one that manages the webpage for the SUPERB workgroup. The CVS repository for this information is on source.eecs.berkeley.edu (see "Using CVS to update this page").

An important note about using Dreamweaver to edit these pages

When editing the pages on the CHESS SUPERB-IT website, I highly recommend setting up a "site" in Dreamweaver to define how all of the pages work together. If you are logged in to ransom.eecs.berkeley.edu through remote desktop, and check out the superb site to your "My Documents" folder (Please use this folder and not "C:\temp\myname" or even worse, "C:\myname") then your site setup would go something like this:

1. (checked out to $MyDocuments\superb)
2. Open Dreamweaver
3. Site->New Site
4. Select the "Advanced" tab
5. Local Info
   1. SiteName = superb (or whatever you like)
   2. Local Root Folder= $MyDocuments\superb\web
6. The rest of the options should be correct by default

You should now have a setup on the left or right of your screen which shows the folder hierarchy of the superb website. Please note that I used some Dreamweaver-specific features in setting up this site which make it easy to maintain the same basic shell around all of the pages with minimal effort. When editing the pages, there are only a few areas which are "out of bounds" in this area. If you really want to change those, edit the page Template (found in the "Templates" folder, funnily enough) in Dreamweaver.

Using CVS to update this page

To edit these pages, you need to check them out. This makes a local copy on your machine (laptop, workstation, or whatever). You edit the local copy, and then commit the changes. CVS supports concurrent editing, and will attempt to merge the changes of multiple authors. When conflicts occur, it tells you upon commiting the changes. In order to use CVS, you must have a CVS account, which you can request by going to this link (Request a CVS account as part of the SUPERB project). Please note you must be logged in to the Chess website in order to request a CVS account.

Using TortoiseCVS

I highly recommend the TortoiseCVS program to manage your interfacing with CVS. Below is a picture of how checking out the superb repository would look:

Basic checkout of the superb module from source.eecs.berkeley.edu

Please check out the module to your "My Documents" folder if you are logged in to ransom.eecs.berkeley.edu via the terminal server. Once you check out the project, your directory will contain a web folder, and other directories which will contain research data, source code, documents, and presentations.

Textual commands

If you like it the old-fashioned way:

• The command to check out this website is:

     cvs -d :ext:source.eecs.berkeley.edu:/home/cvs_chess co superb
     enter your password
  

  This will create a directory "superb" with a subdirectory "web" with at least one file, "index.html". After this directory is created, you never need to do this again.
• Next time you want to edit files on the website, just go to this superb directory and type:

     cvs update -d -P
     enter your password
  

  It will update your local copies of the files.
• You can edit the index.html file, or any other file in the directory.
• You can add a new file or directory by putting it in the same directory and doing:

     cvs add filename.html  (if it's a text file)
     cvs add -kb filename.doc (for example, if it's a binary file)
  

  It's critical to remember the -kb for binary files (Word, PDF, etc.), or else CVS corrupts the file.
• To commit your changes do

     cvs commit -m "explanation of changes"
     enter your password
  

• Once you have committed the changes, you can make them visible on the website by going to the website and clicking on "CVS update" at the bottom of any page.

For more information, see How do I edit pages in a group with the "CVS Authoring" option?

The general CVS faq is at http://www.gigascale.org/softdevel/faq/1/

Using CVS to manage your technical information

All of the technical, reporting, and project sources are really unnecessary for web publication in raw form--they are meant to be distributed as a finished product. An example of this is putting a PDF file of a project report on the webpage (done through the web directory), and storing the sources for creating that PDF file (done through various project directories). For both efforts, use your mentor as the first line of defense, Jonathan Sprinkle as the second.