Windows, NetBeans and CVS (CVSNT)

This post is not strictly related to the IBCP project, but will be helpful explaining how NetBeans (6.9.1) on Windows (XP) was made to work with CVS since it took nearly a day or searching and experimenting to accomplish (and many others were having similar problems).

The initial hope was that NetBeans for Windows would play nice with the CVS installed with MSYS (Minimum SYStem), but it did not. Searching indicated that NetBeans requires a CVS server even for a local repository and apparently, the CVS that comes with MSYS is not sufficient, though when doing a cvs ‑v command, it does respond … 1.11 (client/server). Further searching uncovered The CvsGui project and the WinCVS 2.1.1.1 package (includes WinCVS and CVSNT) was downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/cvsgui/files/. Initially only the CVSNT package was installed (and this may have been sufficient).

Not realizing that there was a Service control panel under the Start menu (under CVSNT) that is used to configure CVSNT, the WinCVS package was installed. Normally WinCVS will also install the required CVSNT (the CVS server), but can be skipped if CVSNT is already installed. WinCVS is a very nice GUI for looking at checked out software (including nice version and branch graphs), however, it does not contain any configuration of CVSNT. And exactly how to check out a module from the repository was not discovered. This was not important as either the command line or NetBeans can be used to check out a module.

Once CVSNT is installed (indicates version 2.0.51d), it requests that Windows be restarted. This is necessary to install and start the CVS services, which occurred automatically upon reboot. Next the CVS server needs to be configured by using the Service control panel. The first tab reported that the services (CVS Service and CVS Lock service) were both running (a good sign).

The CVS repository needs to be identified using the Repositories tab by selecting Add. Using the browse button on the next dialog (the ... button), the repository that had been previously placed at C:/msys/1.0/home/cvsroot by using the MSYS CVS command was selected and entered in the Location field. The Name field was set to /msys/1.0/home/cvsroot.

After selecting Checkout... in NetBeans, the CVS Root was set to :local:/msys/1.0/home/cvsroot using the Edit... button, setting the Access Method to local and setting the Repository path to /msys/1.0/home/cvsroot (the same name as entered in the Name field in the CVSNT Service control panel Repositories tab). If all goes well, selecting Next> will immediately advance to the Module to Checkout page where the Module, Branch and Location Folder fields can be set. If this doesn't appear immediately, NetBeans either responds with an error, or spins its wheels looking for something (don't bother waiting – it's not going to work).

Several environment variables were set in the attempt to get it work and may or may not be necessary. The environment variables can be accessed by right-clicking on My Computer and selecting Properties, then going to the Advanced tab and selecting Environment Variables. Under System variables the following was entered:

PATH – Edited with C:\Program Files\cvsnt; at the beginning
CVSROOT – New set to C:\msys\1.0\home\cvsroot
CVS_EXE – New set to C:\Program Files\cvsnt\cvs.exe
CVS_RSH – New set to C:\Program Files\cvsnt\cvs.exe

One last warning about using CVSNT on Windows. CVSNT expects text files in the repository to be in DOS format (lines are terminated by CR/LF characters). If the text files are in Unix format (terminated by only LF characters), upon checkout, CVSNT will mess up the files by putting extra CR characters on each line. This is probably due to being a Windows program and expecting that text files to be in the expected Windows (DOS) format.