Due to all the problems with CVS and a long search for a better alternative we encountered Subversion. It is a compelling replacement for CVS. A comparison can be found at the better SCM Project hosted on berliOS.
Subversion repositories provided
ExactCODE exports serveral Subversion repositories.
A read-only replication is available at: http://svn2.exactcode.de/ and svn://svn2.exactcode.de/
The most pupular ones are:
A tiny SVN activity graphs
How to get the source out of a repository?
The server provides access via WebDAV (Apache 2) and Subversion own protocol (the custom subversion server listening on port 3690).
To perform a normal source checkout just run:
master site: svn co http://svn.exactcode.de/$project/trunk
or:
master site: svn co svn://svn.exactcode.de/$project/trunk
When you use the "http://" URL you will checkout via Apache and with "svn://" you utilize Subversion'a custom server (port 3690), which most probably is at least two up to five times faster. But when using the "svn://" URL scheme, the client version should be identically to the server versions because the procotol is not not yet written into stone, and changes between minor subversion versions.
On this server Apache is also listening on port 81. So if you experience a problem with a proxy: try port 81 :-). And in the case you need to open a port in your local firewall to access the repository via "svn://" it is listening on port 3690.
There is also a full Subversion handbook / guide available online.
How to get the svn binary program?
It is really easy to compile Subversion and to the svn client yourself. Just get the source from the Subversion project and perform the usual:
cycle.
If - for what reason I can not imagine - it fails to compile Subversion - or you just do not want to do this, we provide a bunch of precompiled, statically linked svn binaries for various architectures incl. x86 (i586-mmx), PowerPC and SPARC.
Is there something like commit emails?
Sure - but since some repositories are rather small there often is not a dedicated mailing-list. If you like to receive commit emails just send an email asking to be in the list for project XYZ's commit mail receivers.