ViewVC

Infobox Software
name = ViewVC



caption = Using ViewCVS to browse the ViewCVS repository
developer = Greg Stein
released = initial release|2001|12|10
latest release version = 1.0.5
latest release date = release date|2008|2|28
programming language = Python
operating system = Cross-platform
language = English
genre = Revision control
license = BSD license
website = http://www.viewvc.org/

ViewVC (formerly ViewCVS) is an open source tool for viewing the contents of CVS and SVN repositories using a web browser. It allows you to look at specific revisions of files as well as side by side diffs of different revisions. It is written in Python and the view parameters can be modified directly in a URL using a REST style interface.

History

ViewVC was inspired by the [http://www.freebsd.org/projects/cvsweb.html CVSweb] application, an older web-based CVS repository viewer written in Perl. The original ViewCVS was a python port of this application, with the intention to add enhancements to the existing functionality.

In 2001 the project was moved to SourceForge, the world's largest software development website. It is currently part of the SourceForge infrastructure by virtue of that fact that it is the repository browser used by the site.

One of the enhancements made was the ability to browse Subversion repositories. The eventual maturity of this support meant that the name "ViewCVS" was no longer appropriate. This, combined with SourceForge's lack of support for Subversion at the time, led to the project being renamed "ViewVC" and moving to tigris.org. This name change and migration occurred in late 2005.

Developers

Some of the people involved with the development of ViewVC are:

* Greg Stein
* Jay Painter
* Tanaka Akira
* Tim Cera
* Peter Funk
* Lucas Bruand
* C. Michael Pilato
* Russell Yanofsky
* James Henstridge

Components

ViewVC consists of two main components. The first part is the repository browser. The second part is the commit database.

Complementary software

* cvsgraph - allows graphical display of the branches and tags associated with a file in the repository.
* GNU enscript - allows syntax highlighting of ViewVC output.
* MySQL - for the commit database.

See also

* CvsWeb
* Chora
* Concurrent Versions System
* OpenGrok
* Subversion

External links

* [http://www.viewvc.org/ ViewVC website]
* [http://viewvc.tigris.org/ ViewVC project page]
* [http://viewvc.tigris.org/source/browse/viewvc/ ViewVC view of the ViewVC repository]
* [http://cvsgrab.sourceforge.net/ CVSGrab] - Reads a CVS repository via the ViewCVS web interface. (Useful for getting through a corporate firewall, where access to the pserver is not possible.)
* [http://search.cpan.org/dist/SVN-Web SVN::Web] A Perl based software that provides functionality similar to ViewVC.