Maven SCM uses a exposes a fixed set of commands for it users. The providers for each SCM must implements those commands through the ScmProvider interface. This is an overview of all the commands:
Produces a list of changed (a new version has been put in the system) files. This list can then be used to display the latest changes or the developer(s) who did the latest changes.
Save the changes you have done into the repository. This will create a new version of the file or directory in the repository.
Copy (part of) the contents of the source control system to a certain location on your local machine. It should be possible to scm operations in that location.
Mark a file as editable with the source control system. This is used in source control systems where you look at read-only files and you need to make them not read-only anymore before you can edit them. In some scm's this means that no other user can then do an edit at the same time.
Gives a list of files that still need some source control operation (files that still need to be added, files that are in edit mode, ...)