Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!decwrl!ucbvax!hplabs!hplabsz!sartin
From: sartin@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Rob Sartin)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Source Code Control
Summary: Use RCS "symbolic names" to mark releases
Message-ID: <3533@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 27 Jun 89 18:47:58 GMT
References: <791@redsox.bsw.com> <357@umigw.MIAMI.EDU>
Reply-To: sartin@hplabs.hp.com (Rob Sartin)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Software Technology Lab
Lines: 33

In article <357@umigw.MIAMI.EDU> steve@umigw.miami.edu (steve emmerson) 
refers to the problems of using the RCS "state" attribute to mark
releases. 

The two problems of using "state" that way are 1) backdating of modules
to appear "as if" they were in the release and 2) only one "state" is
attached to each revision.  I've dealt with that in the past by using
the rcs "symbolic name" feature to attach a name to the source used for
each release.

To do a release you need to traverse all of the directories containing
RCS files marking the latest revision with the release name using rcs -n
and some magic command to find the latest revision.  The advantage of
this method is that you don't have to artificially update unchanged
modules between releases.

As one example I was involved in a product that had an emergency bug fix
release (release 4.0) that required modifications to about 3 modules out
of hundreds and hundreds.  Using the "state" method I would have had to
either 1) fake the new release to be 3.0 without being able to document
the differences between the original 3.0 and the bug fix release or 2)
do forced checkins of hundreds and hundreds of unchanged modules to get
the state to "Rel4_0".  Using the "symbolic names" feature all I had to
do was add symbolic names to the latest revision of the 3 changed files
and 'rcs -nRel4_0:Rel3_0' for everything else.

Somewhere we had a modified version of rcs that supported attaching
symbolic names to the latest revision, eliminating the need for the
"magic command" mentioned before.

Rob Sartin                      internet: sartin@hplabs.hp.com
Software Technology Lab         uucp    : hplabs!sartin
Hewlett-Packard                 voice   : (415) 857-7592