If you want to contribute to the GTS development, or simply get the bleeding edge version of the code, you will have to get used to CVS. This document will be a quick tutorial.

CVS is a powerful method of allowing many developers to work on the same source code. This is possible because each developer checks out a copy of the current version of the source code. Then they each independently work on their personal copy of the sources. When they have made changes, they commit them back to the CVS repository. The CVS server takes care of things like trying to merge their changes with those of others. When that doesn't work, the developer is notified and they do a hand merge of the conflicts.

So that is how developers use CVS. To just try out the latest versions of stuff, you don't have to usually worry about all that. You will just need to understand how to check out packages. Understand, however, that you are looking at the latest and greatest version, and usually it might not even build, or it will core dump instantly. That is ok, as the people working on it will fix those problems before a stable release is made. So don't email them about the problems you find!

First you need to setup a few environmental variables.

The first command you need is:

$ export CVSROOT=':pserver:anonymous@cvs.sf.net:/cvsroot/gts'

You might want to put this in your login script.

Then do the command:

$ cvs login

When prompted for a password for anonymous, simply press the Enter key. This only needs to be done only ONCE, not everytime you access CVS.

Now grab the package you need. The first time you will want to do something like:

$ cvs -z3 checkout gts

Please use the -z3 option to minimize network bandwidth (-z9 eats too much CPU time - please don't use it).

Now you will want to go through and build and install the packages. That is beyond the scope of this review of CVS, however.

After you have checked the code out, you can use:

$ cvs -z3 update -Pd gts

to update your personal copy of GTS to the latest version from the CVS server.

I strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with the cvs documentation. (It's much easier reading if you print it out, and read it offline)

Here is a CVS FAQ of sorts.