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Is it useful to learn CVS before learning SVN? Does much of that knowledge carry over to SVN or are they too different?

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  • Does CVS have an easier learning curve? I'm looking to save time at the moment.
    – Ein Doofus
    Commented Sep 17, 2011 at 0:21
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    No, if anything SVN is easier and better supported. To accelerate your learning you can look into tools like Tortoise SVN (tortoisesvn.net) or other clients. Also tools like Visual SVN make setting up a server a breeze: (visualsvn.com).
    – Turnkey
    Commented Sep 17, 2011 at 0:43

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Both CVS and SVN are centralized version control systems. Having existing knowledge of workflows and using one will help you use the other, but learning CVS first simply to use SVN wouldn't add any value. If you are interested in a centralized version control system or your team is using SVN, just jump right into SVN. Documentation and tutorials abound on the Internet.

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    The objective of the SVN project was "CVS done right." But if you have no need to use CVS, then just jump right into SVN. You really won't miss anything important.
    – Jeff Grigg
    Commented Sep 17, 2011 at 3:53
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No. Learning CVS is not useful and it will rot your brain and teach you bad habits. Recall that CVS is basically a wrapper for RCS which is about as poor as SCCS. SVN replaces all the functionality of CVS and removes the limitations.

It's kind of like asking if you should learn Visual Basic before learning Javascript. Yuck, why would anyone bother.

The better bet is to learn SVN and also learn one other system which is decentralized such as mercurial or git.

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    CVS is definitely an old system that has been superseded by SVN (among others), but I don't think if I'd go so far as to say it will "rot your brain and teach you bad habits". Using any version control is better than using none, and the concepts of checking in, checking out, merging, branching, and so forth still exist in CVS, but are much less sophisticated or much more limited.
    – Thomas Owens ♦
    Commented Sep 17, 2011 at 1:13
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    SVN does absolutely horrible things to the concept of tagging, whereas CVS lacks the concept of a changeset. Both are way better than some systems though (VSS anyone?) and worse than others; once you find a DVCS you like, you won't look back.
    – Donal Fellows
    Commented Sep 17, 2011 at 1:32
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    Though SVN went forward in a couple of areas over CVS it got other concepts horribly wrong )or mangled them (Tags/Branches). But in the end they have both been superseded (IMO) by git.
    – Loki Astari
    Commented Sep 17, 2011 at 5:11
  • There is nothing wrong with VisualBasic
    – Todd Moses
    Commented Sep 17, 2011 at 6:42
  • "There is nothing wrong with VisualBasic" I hope this was written for comedic effect.
    – Jonathan Cline IEEE
    Commented Sep 20, 2011 at 1:24

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