GNU RCS 5.9.1

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2013-10/msg00001.html

by lelf • 13 years ago

33 28 13 years ago

lists.gnu.org

jordigh• 13 years ago

Why is this still maintained? It even stores its own source under git:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/rcs.git/?h=p

So much for dogfooding...

Erwin• 13 years ago

If you want to version control a single file locally with no fuss (exactly one file,v file for storing changesets), I could still see it being handy.

It seems it has a maintainer that is very inclusive and accepts all portability fixes. Which is nice enough; many newer open source products are more like fireflies.

adfadf• 13 years ago

RCS is still used at my work. Some of its features (or omission of features) work well with our shared file system, and we often need to keep only one or two files in a directory under version control.

pjungwir• 13 years ago

I worked at an agency around 2000-2005 that used RCS to keep files like httpd.conf under source control. Not a great solution, but there were no free "configuration management" tools then, and it was a pretty unrestricted place, with developers and sysadmins sharing access to production systems. It's not what I'd do today, but it was better than nothing and gave them some safety without costing much in process.

trothamel• 13 years ago

People may have information stored under RCS that they still want to access. It doesn't look like there's a lot of work being done to add new features, but having the ability to run RCS on new machines seems like it's a good hedge against data loss.

gnoway• 13 years ago

We're not using RCS, but we use GNU CSSC for an old SCCS codebase.

Many people here are keyed into 'new hotness' startup projects. But there are a lot of us out here maintaining 20+ year old codebases for products in maintenance/support mode only. Migrating them to modern version control is a tough sell. CSSC in particular lets me at least host the code on something modern.

tonyplee• 13 years ago

It is a dogfood eating cat. :-)

pcx66• 13 years ago

Adding to what others said, someone I know is planning to use this as a starting point for understanding version control systems. The reason stated was it's simplicity.

bch2• 13 years ago

For distributed SCM, I've got enjoyment out of darcs documentation over the years (ie: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Understanding_Darcs/Patch_theor...), and fossil (http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/permutedind..., specifically http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/tech_overvi..., http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/concepts.wi..., http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/fileformat...., etc)

bch2• 13 years ago

I ran into an RCS project of my own, just 2 days ago. There are code repositories out there older than git that are still important.

ghshephard3• 13 years ago

git / RCS serve very different purposes.

RCS is a pretty excellent tool when you have a single file (like httpd.conf, hosts, a zone file) that you want to manage on a server. 80%+ sysadmins know how to ci/co and use rcs in that context. Likely less than 10% of sysadmins would grok the use of git in that context.

Also - does git even have the concept of "check out with lock, check in free lock, etc?"

lmm3• 13 years ago

80%+ sysadmins know how to ci/co and use rcs in that context. Likely less than 10% of sysadmins would grok the use of git in that context.

Citation needed, because my experience is the exact opposite.

isomorphic• 13 years ago

There have been attempts to address git's shortcomings with respect to independent revision control of a single file: There is the "zit" project at

http://git.oblomov.eu/zit

...although it wasn't ideal for me, and it doesn't look like it's been updated in a while. E.g., these days that should be on GitHub!

RCS really fits well with the use-case of /etc configuration files. It's a pity that Git doesn't function very well for that particular case.

Diederich2• 13 years ago

I believe Perforce still uses RCS under the covers.

e40• 13 years ago

RCS format not RCS and only when text files are used.

peterwwillis3• 13 years ago

So much for dogfooding...

It's not maintained by start-up people or MBAs so they don't have to handicap themselves in a world of trite buzzwords. Also, it's still maintained because people still use it. Figured that would be obvious.

_kst_• 13 years ago

In most other VCSs, revision numbers apply to the entire repository. In RCS and CVS, they apply to single files, which can be more convenient if you're maintaining a collection of files that are largely independent of each other.

jsilence• 13 years ago

I'm using rcs for quick and dirty versioning of my config files. Very easy to do. Clean. Zero config. No dependencies. No fluff.

GNU RCS 5.9.1

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