Wednesday, July 30, 2008

TortoiseCVS - Does it crash when you try to update or commit?

I found TortoiseCVS one of the best CVS clients to be used at a WindowsXP end. However, I had some hard times at the beginning. When I was trying to use CVS update/commit, it was crashing and XP's famous error reporting message box was poping up afterwards.

In my case, the cvs client couldn't connect to the server because of authorization issues. The solution was to add an environment variable:
  • CVS_RSH which points to the Plink executable (Plink is the one which tries to establish the client/server connection); for example, C:\Program Files\TortoiseCVS\TortoisePlink.exe.
Adding an environment variable in XP is an easy task:
  • Right Click on "My Computer" -> Properties -> Select "Advanced" tab -> Click on "Environment Variables" at the bottom of the window -> Add CVS_RSH as a system variable.