Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!SUN.COM!wmb
From: wmb@SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Selling Forth to Manglement
Message-ID: <9001241638.AA08018@jade.berkeley.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 90 22:56:22 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: Forth Interest Group International List <FIGI-L%SCFVM.bitnet@jade.berkeley.edu>
Organization: The Internet
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> Are people using something like Polytron's PCS or MPW Projector
> to store source diffs? How well does the blocks scheme work
> with these source management systems?

We use the Unix SCCS (RCS would work just as well) facility and store
Forth source code in regular text files.

I know of another company that manages their Forth source code with
some data base program running on networked PC's.  They too use text
files.

I would expect that SCCS would have some trouble with blocks, because
its basic unit of difference comparison is a line.  Anyway, the use
of screens for source under an operating system that prefers to use files
is an anachronism.  Screens are an optimization for a set of constraints
that no longer applies in most cases.  More than any other aspect of Forth,
the use of screens for source code has made Forth look ridiculous in
the eyes of the rest of the programming community.


> Forth words are decomposed
> more than the average procedures in other languages. Does this
> place special demands on a source management system?

It doesn't seem to.  SCCS doesn't care about procedure boundaries;
it calculates differences on a line-by-line basis.

Mitch