Re: [PLUG] Revision Control for the Rest of Us

[bergman@merctech.com]

In the message dated: Thu, 16 Nov 2017 13:50:56 -0500,
The pithy ruminations from JP Vossen on 
<Re: [PLUG] Revision Control for the Rest of Us> were:
=> On 11/16/2017 01:08 PM, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
=> > Excellent idea.  And while it's clear that git has largely prevailed
=> > over its competitors and predecessors, let me put in a word for RCS.
=> > 
=> > RCS has been around a very long time.  It's very stable -- and very limited.
=> > There are all kinds of things it doesn't do, and of course, if you need to
=> > do those things, you probably shouldn't use it.
=> > 
=> > But in its favor are two things: first, there are a lot of simple use
=> > cases that it handles beautifully.  Second, you can learn it in ten minutes.
=> 
=> <snip>
=> 
=> I covered RCS in the first edition of the _bash Cookbook_ but dropped it 
=> in the just released second edition because...while you are correct, for 
=> trivial use cases I think bzr or hg are just as simple and do a whole 
=> lot more.

Other systems (bzr, hg) may simpler for end users (particularly
developers), but RCS still has a vital role for system adminsitrators.

It's very light-weight (no database of any kind required, versioned
files are text and are fairly human-readable...if you enjoy curling up to
read a nice "diff"), it's not client/server or distributed (no network
required, no daemon required even if running locally) and it's arguably
more secure than any 'modern' versioning system. Did you just commit the
file "secretkey"? No problem...the versioned file is still only readable
by the same account[s] that did the commit.

Since BSD 4.2, I haven't found a better tool for version control of
individual system files (think stuff in /etc)....but I'm grateful to
folks on this list for pointing out alternatives.  [Note that "version
control" is absolutely not the same thing as "configuration management".]

Mark

=> 
=> But ESR not only agrees with you, he wrote SRC as a Python wrapper 
=> around RCS:
=> * http://www.catb.org/esr/src/
=> * http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7008
=> * http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6529
=> * FAQ: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6518	< Read this one
=> * New: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6502
=> 
=> Later,
=> JP
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