previous section. CVS originated as UNIX shell scripts and was eventually re-written as CVS in the late 1980s. CVS shines the most when used to keep track of text files. It does a good job of displaying deltas, merging text differences, and in some cases even adding version information to source files automatically.
CVS is originally a command line tool, but many other tools such as WinCVS and NetBeans provide GUI’s to access CVS repositories.
CVS is in widespread use as a means of disseminating open source projects on the Internet. The Apache family of projects, JBoss, and many others offer anonymous CVS access for nightly source drops.