Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: SCCS vs. RCS
Message-ID: <7087@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 14 Jan 88 11:08:41 GMT
References: <743@dragon.UUCP> <720003@hpclskh.HP.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 15

In article <720003@hpclskh.HP.COM> skh@hpclskh.HP.COM writes:
>My only comment to you would be this:  the versions of SCCS I have seen
>store the original source file and differences from that file.  RCS versions
>tend to store the latest source file and differences from previous versions.

SCCS archives are not the way you describe.

>This means that SCCS takes longer to give the the latest version of a file;
>RCS takes longer to get back to a previous version.

Since SCCS "get" does not in fact have to apply each delta separately, but
rather applies them all in one sequential scan, it is fairly fast.

It takes SCCS "get" about a second on a VAX-11/780 to retrieve the latest
version of a 1000-line program that has undergone from 4 to 10 revisions.