How do I connect to a CVS repository in Eclipse?
Author: Deron Eriksson
Description: This tutorial demonstrates how to connect to a CVS repository in Eclipse.
Tutorial created using: Windows XP || JDK 1.5.0_09 || Eclipse Web Tools Platform 2.0 (Eclipse 3.3.0)


Connecting to a CVSW repository is easy in EclipseSW. In fact, Eclipse has a CVS Respository Exploring perspective.

Opening CVS Repository Exploring Perspective

We can access a CVS repository in Eclipse by adding it to the list of repositories in the CVS Repositories view. To add a new repository, you can right-click the CVS Repositories view and select New → Repository Location.

New Repository Location

That brings up the Add CVS Repository pop-up window. You can put the CVS server host in the Host box. You can also put the host's IP address here. In the example below, I only have the short host name rather than a full domain name since I'm working with a Windows Workgroup on my local network. In other text boxes, you need to specify the repository path, user name, password, connection type, and port. In this example, we're using pserver as the connection type. In a business environment, the CVS server should be set up to handle a secure connection type, and the proper connection type should be used.

Add CVS Repository

If the "Validate connection on finish" checkbox is checked, Eclipse will try to connect to the CVS repository when you click Finish. The "Save password" option saves your password so that you don't need to keep typing it each time you connect to the repository.

After clicking Finish, the new CVS repository was added to the CVS Repositories view. The example below shows the empty repository that we set up in another tutorial.

CVS Repository added to CVS Repositories View

As we shall see in other tutorials, Eclipse has some really great CVS tools.