The command-line based CVS tool is hard to use for first time users; many GUI-based CVS tools are not really well designed to be easy to use either. I’m not against the point that developers and testers should learn how to use a technical tool in no time even though the tool is hard to use, but developers and testers have their schedules and need to be efficient. Having an efficient way to add and update files to CVS is very necessary.
Eclipse is the tool I use to deal with CVS file operations. It works really well not only with source code, but any other file type.
For example, if you want to upload a Microsoft Word document (docx) to a remote CVS repository, simply follow the following steps:
1. In Eclipse, import the remote CVS repository by using the Import wizard:
a. Click File->Import
b. Choose “Projects from CVS” and click Next
c. Depends on real situation, either select “Create a new repository location” or “Use an existing repository location”. In this example, we use an existing repository location because we want to add the Microsoft Word document to an existing CVS repository. Click Next.
d. Select “Use an existing module”, and navigate the tree list to find the repository you want to add the file to. Click Next.
Note: If you need to upload different files to different subfolders (repositories) within a folder (repository), it’s often useful to select the parent folder in this step so you don’t need to run this wizard every time for each of the subfolders.
e. Follow the remaining steps in the wizard to finish the import process. Selecting “Check out as a project in the workspace” is the easiest way to import the repository to a new project. If you want to import it into your existing project, select “Check out into existing project.”
2. Import the file(s) you want to add/update to the CVS repository to the appropriate folders:
a. In the Project Explorer, expand the folder you just checked out from CVS, right click the folder you want to add the new file to, and click “Import” from the context menu.
b. Select “File System” and click Next.
c. Click “Browse…” to browse the folder containing the file you want to add or update to CVS.
d. Select the files, and click “Finish”.
3. Now the file(s) you want to add or update to CVS are in the appropriate folders. Right click each file, and click Team-> Commit to commit the file to the corresponding remote CVS repository.
Hope this helps.