From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [50.116.15.146]) by inbox.vuxu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C914131015 for ; Sat, 14 Dec 2024 00:19:57 +0100 (CET) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB38D42783; Sat, 14 Dec 2024 09:19:52 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 4B71E42782 for ; Sat, 14 Dec 2024 09:19:48 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 84F0A35EA3F; Fri, 13 Dec 2024 15:19:47 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2024 15:19:47 -0800 From: Larry McVoy To: Norman Wilson Message-ID: <20241213231947.GB11590@mcvoy.com> References: <242CD757E4871441B72EA52F30CF4531.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <242CD757E4871441B72EA52F30CF4531.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Message-ID-Hash: F5IPUE6MLN4WSQKTL5XWY6ZHQANKTNVF X-Message-ID-Hash: F5IPUE6MLN4WSQKTL5XWY6ZHQANKTNVF X-MailFrom: lm@mcvoy.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: tuhs@tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: SCCS roach motel List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 05:57:55PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote: > This is verging on COFF material, and I won't mind if someone > moves the discussion thither: > > Clem Cole: > > As a satisfied user of SCCS (and later Bitkeeper), it's still my preferred > choice. > > ==== > > I have to admit SCCS is one of the many pieces of software > I tried for a week or two > 40 years ago and abandoned because > I couldn't stand it. I don't think I ever tried RCS, because > I could see it didn't what I saw as the underlying problems. > CVS likewise. Subversion was the earliest version-control > system that felt usable to me. > > What bugged me so much? The earlier systems were focussed > entirely (or for CVS, almost entirely) on individual files. > There was no way to link changes that affected more than one > file: That was the problem that BitKeeper solved. There was an extra step, bk commit, that glued all the files together in an atomic commit. That and each commit was like a CVS tag, you can roll the history back to any commit, no tags are needed. That's because while you think of a revision as 1.5 or whatever, and BitKeeper had that interface, the real name is a a provably unique key made up of user@host|path/to/file.c|time_t|sccs_cksum We called those "keys" and you could use a key any place you could use a revision. I'll spare you how we made them unique, but I can tell you that in two decades of BK use on every continent other than the artic, we've never had a key collision. Does require that you use DNS. BTW, the CVS/SCCS/RCS importers guessed at commit boundaries and made those systems yield commits. We looked at author, check in comments, and time stamps, same author, same comments and within a short window, that's the same commit. --lm