Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!algor2!jeffrey
From: jeffrey@algor2.UUCP (Jeffrey Kegler)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: SCCS vs RCS
Message-ID: <460@algor2.UUCP>
Date: 24 Jun 89 01:22:49 GMT
References: <19885@adm.BRL.MIL> <4750022@hpirs.HP.COM> <494@silence.princeton.nj.us>
Reply-To: jeffrey@algor2.UUCP (Jeffrey Kegler)
Organization: Algorists, Inc., Reston VA
Lines: 28

In article <494@silence.princeton.nj.us> jay@silence.princeton.nj.us (Jay Plett) writes:
>
>Several people have discussed the relative merits of RCS and SCCS.
>Did I just miss it, or has nobody mentioned the greatest advantage
>that RCS has over SCCS?  RCS is freely available as source code.
>

It is certainly an important point, though not an overwhelming advantage
for all users.  SCCS is more common, so if the stuff is to be ported and
the people on the target are to be able to take advantage of the history,
SCCS is better.  RCS could be ported of course, but to ask that under some
circumstances is not reasonable (or even where reasonable, not possible :-
)) The fact that SCCS is AT&T supported makes it a better choice for some
clients.

Particularly, every programmer should know the basics of SCCS, even if they
do not use it day to day.  This is for the same reason that they should
know ed, even though they always use vi or emacs, and that they should know
sh, even though they use ksh or csh.

IMHO, RCS is technically smoother, and the advantage of having source is
overwhelming where I personally am concerned and porting to unknown
environments is not a worry.  I wind up using SCCS more, though.
-- 

Jeffrey Kegler, President, Algorists,
jeffrey@algor2.UU.NET or uunet!algor2!jeffrey
1762 Wainwright DR, Reston VA 22090