Generally, SmartCVS can be launched on any operating system which has full support for Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.5 or newer. For other systems, e.g. OS/2, which only support Java 1.4, SmartCVS might run, but we don't offer any support for it. It requires a screen resolution of at least 1024x768 pixels.
SmartCVS saves its settings by default outside of the installation directory, so your settings will be kept when updating the SmartCVS applcation. You can find out the actual settings path by opening the About dialog and taking a look at the Information page. But before updating, you always have to exit SmartCVS (ProjectExit). Closing just the last window is sufficient any more, because SmartCVS still lives in the tray.
If you want to get a self-contained application which runs out of the box, download the Windows-bundle with JRE. If you are sure, you already have the right JRE installed on your system, you can use the Windows-bundle without JRE instead. The installer requires administrator privileges and installs SmartCVS in the common places, so all accounts on the machine will be able to use it. This implies, that a quickstart icon cannot be installed automatically (it is user-based), so you have to copy the desktop icon yourself to the quickstart icons area.
Download the generic bundle and unpack it using the command line
tar xzf smartcvs*.tar.gz
to your preferred location. Ensure, that an up to date JRE from SUN is installed on your system. Some systems, e.g. Fedora, ship with GCJ (GNU libgcj) or beta version of OpenJDK which are not sufficient. On Ubuntu systems use Synaptic to install the Java Runtime Environment 1.6.0 from SUN (package "sun-java6-jre" from the "multiverse" repository). Depending on your system configuration, it might be necessary to uncomment the following line
#JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/java
in the file bin/smartcvs.sh and set the correct path for the installed JRE.
Finally, launch the bin/smartcvs.sh.
Download the Mac bundle and double click it. Move the SmartCVS application to your preferred location, usually /Applications. If you prefer, use the usualy drag and drop to create an icon in the dock.