Pre vcs versions of zsh

Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Eric Cook]

Hey all,

when answering a user's question this morning in irc (about zsh's history) it prompted to me dig into paul's initial release of zsh for an answer.

This time i decided to extract the shar from his initial post on alt.sources which resulted in the initial source code for zsh 1.0.
So i decided to see what other versions i could turn up that isn't in git (anything below 3.1.5).

This is by no means an inclusive list (that i am aware of):
https://github.com/llua/zsh-1.0
https://github.com/llua/zsh-2.0.0
https://github.com/llua/zsh-2.1.0
https://github.com/llua/zsh-2.2.0
https://github.com/llua/zsh-2.3.1
https://github.com/llua/zsh-2.5.0

I made no attempt to actually compile any of these, so i don't know if they will with a recent toolchain.

I added the shar into the directory ./shar/ since in post01 there may be tidbits of information people find interesting.
for 2.0.0 there is also a ./patchlevels/ directory that contains the patches that eventually became 2.1.0;
also there tidbits of info.


If i find more versions i'll add them to my account and reply to this thread.

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Bart Schaefer]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 3:56 PM Eric Cook <llua@gmx.com> wrote:
>
> If i find more versions i'll add them to my account and reply to this thread.

Well, that's entertaining.  Couldn't find zsh-2.4?

zsh-2.5.x is, I believe, the period of the Great Interregnum, where a
faction that wanted to turn zsh into a perfect ksh clone took control
and most of the old guard backed away from the project for a couple of
years.  When that fizzled out, 2.6 was resurrected from 2.4 with only
the "good bits" of the 2.5 era preserved.  I think 2.6 may have become
3.0 without ever officially going past beta, but don't recall for
certain.

Looks like something is still here:
https://www.rpi.edu/dept/acm/packages/zsh/2.6-beta10/

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Eric Cook]

On 4/15/21 7:37 PM, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 3:56 PM Eric Cook <llua@gmx.com> wrote:
>>
>> If i find more versions i'll add them to my account and reply to this thread.
>
> Well, that's entertaining.  Couldn't find zsh-2.4?
>

Nah, i started with alt.sources as linked from wikipedia; after some discussion/help with leah2[1]
i found out google's archive was mangling white space from the code and she supplied me with a usable shar.

after that i found a archive of comp.sources.misc[2] and nabbed the others. that archive has a gap between
volume 47 and 93 so i was going to eventually look to find those if possible. along the way i saw some
interesting stuff like versions of rc, pdksh and some seemingly posix like MSDOS shell, ms_sh[3].


[1] https://github.com/leahneukirchen
[2] http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/misc/archive/comp.sources.misc/
[3] http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/misc/archive/comp.sources.misc/volume12/ms_sh-1.6

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Ray Andrews]

On 2021-04-15 4:37 p.m., Bart Schaefer wrote:
>
> zsh-2.5.x is, I believe, the period of the Great Interregnum, where a
>
Cool.  Someone should write an official history.  Philosophical 
disagreements can be
difficult, but often very fruitful.

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Stephane Chazelas]

2021-04-15 18:56:03 -0400, Eric Cook:
[...]
> If i find more versions i'll add them to my account and reply to this thread.

Beside the ones you already have, I also have:

zsh-2.4.306.tar.gz
zsh-2.5.03.tar.gz
zsh-2.6-beta10.tar.gz
zsh-2.6-beta11.tar.gz
zsh-2.6-beta12.tar.gz
zsh-2.6-beta13.tar.gz
zsh-2.6-beta14.tar.gz
zsh-2.6-beta15.tar.gz
zsh-2.6-beta16-2.6-beta17.diff.gz
zsh-2.6-beta17-2.6-beta18.diff.gz
zsh-2.6-beta18-2.6-beta19.diff.gz
zsh-2.6-beta19-2.6-beta20.diff.gz
zsh-2.6-beta20-2.6-beta21.diff.gz
zsh-2.6-beta21-3.0-pre1.diff.gz
zsh-3.0.0.src.tgz
zsh-3.0.0-3.0.1.diff.gz
zsh-3.0.2.tar.gz
zsh-3.0.3.tar.gz
zsh-3.0.4.tar.gz
zsh-3.0.5.tar.gz
zsh-3.0.6.tar.gz
zsh-3.0.7.tar.gz
zsh-3.1.0-RCS.tar.gz
zsh-3.1.1-RCS.tar.gz
zsh-3.1.2.tar.gz
zsh-3.1.3.tar.gz
zsh-3.1.4.tar.gz
zsh-3.1.5.tar.gz

if you're interested.

I can't tell where I downloaded them from as that was a long
time ago probably from many different places.

The RCS ones have commit log information that go back to 3.0,
all commits by hzoli (Zoltan Hidvegi, the maintainer at the
time).

It would probably be more useful to reconstruct one git
repository out of all those versions (with authorship, dates
where available, and tags for each version) rather than one repo
per version.

Also note that file modification times as stored in tar files
sometimes being useful information from an archeological PoV.

-- 
Stephane

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Stephane Chazelas]

2021-04-16 06:59:09 +0100, Stephane Chazelas:
[...]
> I can't tell where I downloaded them from as that was a long
> time ago probably from many different places.
[...]

Probably from https://mirrors.ircam.fr/pub/zsh/old/

and 2.4.306 from
https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware-2.1/source/ap/zsh/zsh-2.4.306.tar.gz
-- 
Stephane

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Daniel Shahaf]

Stephane Chazelas wrote on Fri, 16 Apr 2021 05:59 +00:00:
> 2021-04-15 18:56:03 -0400, Eric Cook:
> [...]
> > If i find more versions i'll add them to my account and reply to this thread.
> 
> Beside the ones you already have, I also have:

I'm happy to grab all these onto zsh.org for archival.  If y'all could
send me a list of wget / git clone commands that'd be much appreciated ☺

> Also note that file modification times as stored in tar files
> sometimes being useful information from an archeological PoV.

+1

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Peter Stephenson]

> On 16 April 2021 at 15:08 Daniel Shahaf <d.s@daniel.shahaf.name> wrote:
> Stephane Chazelas wrote on Fri, 16 Apr 2021 05:59 +00:00:
> > 2021-04-15 18:56:03 -0400, Eric Cook:
> > [...]
> > > If i find more versions i'll add them to my account and reply to this thread.
> > 
> > Beside the ones you already have, I also have:
> 
> I'm happy to grab all these onto zsh.org for archival.  If y'all could
> send me a list of wget / git clone commands that'd be much appreciated ☺
> 
> > Also note that file modification times as stored in tar files
> > sometimes being useful information from an archeological PoV.
> 
> +1

Hmm... once they're publicly available in one place (I'll be downloading them
for backup anyway if they go in the usual place on the website), it's not THAT
much work to create the equivalent of a vendor branch in git and dump in these
versions one by one, with some creative use of dates in the commit log, if anyone
is interested.

As it's pre-vcs, I don't think any fancy branching would be needed, just a linear
record.

pws

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Matthew Martin]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 03:23:02PM +0100, Peter Stephenson wrote:
> > On 16 April 2021 at 15:08 Daniel Shahaf <d.s@daniel.shahaf.name> wrote:
> > Stephane Chazelas wrote on Fri, 16 Apr 2021 05:59 +00:00:
> > > 2021-04-15 18:56:03 -0400, Eric Cook:
> > > [...]
> > > > If i find more versions i'll add them to my account and reply to this thread.
> > > 
> > > Beside the ones you already have, I also have:
> > 
> > I'm happy to grab all these onto zsh.org for archival.  If y'all could
> > send me a list of wget / git clone commands that'd be much appreciated ☺
> > 
> > > Also note that file modification times as stored in tar files
> > > sometimes being useful information from an archeological PoV.
> > 
> > +1
> 
> Hmm... once they're publicly available in one place (I'll be downloading them
> for backup anyway if they go in the usual place on the website), it's not THAT
> much work to create the equivalent of a vendor branch in git and dump in these
> versions one by one, with some creative use of dates in the commit log, if anyone
> is interested.
> 
> As it's pre-vcs, I don't think any fancy branching would be needed, just a linear
> record.

It is possible to add those versions to the history using git replace.
I'd be happy to do that; just need to agree on what author and commit
name and dates to spoof.

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Bart Schaefer]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 426 bytes --]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 7:33 AM Matthew Martin <phy1729@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> It is possible to add those versions to the history using git replace.
>

I think I'd prefer PWS's suggestion of putting them on a vendor branch,
rather than pasting them in front of Tanaka's initial revision, if the
latter is what you accomplish by "replace".  (My
limited-to-what-I've-previously-done-myself git experience is probably
showing.)

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Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Oliver Kiddle]

Bart Schaefer wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 7:33 AM Matthew Martin <[1]phy1729@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     It is possible to add those versions to the history using git replace.

> I think I'd prefer PWS's suggestion of putting them on a vendor branch, rather
> than pasting them in front of Tanaka's initial revision, if the latter is what
> you accomplish by "replace".  (My limited-to-what-I've-previously-done-myself
> git experience is probably showing.)

Replacement references are just data blobs stored in git that tell it to
do things like pretend the parent commit of a commit is something
different. They have to be explicitly pushed and fetched. So essentially
they'd be an optional thing that would chain the separate vendor
branches together in the right order with the later commits.

The first tag in a linear history going back from the present seems to
be zsh-3.1.6-dev-21 but the repository does have tags going back to
3.1.5 with the various 3.1.5-pws-X releases apparently there. It'd be
really great if someone wants to work out what's going on there and tie
it in nicely with replacement references. Given that the -pws releases
were very frequent at the time, it might even be possible to dig patches
out of the -workers archives and reconstruct the history between them,
even if only partially with big fixup jumps. Older history can still be
very useful when trying to understand the code.

If anyone has other old data such as list archives it would be good to
collate it even if all we do is dump it on zero.zsh.org for now. As far
as possible we should try to put the old releases under old/ in the ftp
directory in their original form with original timestamps - using .shar
if that's what was in the usenet posts.

Oliver

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Stephane Chazelas]

2021-04-16 14:08:10 +0000, Daniel Shahaf:
> Stephane Chazelas wrote on Fri, 16 Apr 2021 05:59 +00:00:
> > 2021-04-15 18:56:03 -0400, Eric Cook:
> > [...]
> > > If i find more versions i'll add them to my account and reply to this thread.
> > 
> > Beside the ones you already have, I also have:
> 
> I'm happy to grab all these onto zsh.org for archival.  If y'all could
> send me a list of wget / git clone commands that'd be much appreciated ☺
> 
> > Also note that file modification times as stored in tar files
> > sometimes being useful information from an archeological PoV.
> 
> +1

Besides the links I've already given (https://mirrors.ircam.fr/pub/zsh/old/ and
https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware-2.1/source/ap/zsh/zsh-2.4.306.tar.gz)
the earlier ones posted to usenet can be found raw (as usenet
articles with shar archives inside) at:

1.0:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/utzoo/files/news133f1.tar.bz2
in:

b194/alt/sources/2805:Subject: zsh - a ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 1 of 8)
b194/alt/sources/2806:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 2 of 8)
b194/alt/sources/2807:Subject: zsh - a ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 3 of 8)
b194/alt/sources/2808:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 4 of 8)
b194/alt/sources/2809:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 5 of 8)
b194/alt/sources/2810:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 6 of 8)
b194/alt/sources/2811:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 7 of 8)
b194/alt/sources/2812:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 8 of 8)

2.0 to 2.00.03:

http://ftp.fi.netbsd.org/pub/misc/archive/comp.sources.misc/volume18/zsh2.00/

-- 
Stephane

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Stephane Chazelas]

2021-04-16 16:03:42 +0100, Stephane Chazelas:
[...]
> Besides the links I've already given (https://mirrors.ircam.fr/pub/zsh/old/ and
> https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware-2.1/source/ap/zsh/zsh-2.4.306.tar.gz)
> the earlier ones posted to usenet can be found raw (as usenet
> articles with shar archives inside) at:
> 
> 1.0:
> 
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/utzoo/files/news133f1.tar.bz2
> in:
> 
> b194/alt/sources/2805:Subject: zsh - a ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 1 of 8)
> b194/alt/sources/2806:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 2 of 8)
> b194/alt/sources/2807:Subject: zsh - a ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 3 of 8)
> b194/alt/sources/2808:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 4 of 8)
> b194/alt/sources/2809:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 5 of 8)
> b194/alt/sources/2810:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 6 of 8)
> b194/alt/sources/2811:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 7 of 8)
> b194/alt/sources/2812:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 8 of 8)
> 
> 2.0 to 2.00.03:
> 
> http://ftp.fi.netbsd.org/pub/misc/archive/comp.sources.misc/volume18/zsh2.00/
[...]

There's also:

http://grumbeer.dyndns.org/ftp/cdroms/infomagic/9508/infomagic9508_disc2/system/Shells/zsh-2.6-beta9.tar.gz

So looking at the changelogs, we're missing:

2.3

a bunch of 2.4.x (I see some references to 2.4.291 in 2.4.306
for instance, it's possible those 291, 306 are internal and that
not many  were released in the wild, they look like some beta
run up to 2.5 like 2.6-beta were run ups to 3.0)

FAQ in there says:

  The next production version will be 2.5 (2.4 will not be released, so
  as to minimise confusion over version numbers).  It is expected that
  no new features will be added before the release.

Which didn't stop slackware from shipping that 2.4.306.

2.5.01
2.5.02
2.6-beta{1..8}

(I started using zsh around the late 2.6 betas myself)

-- 
Stephane

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Stephane Chazelas]

2021-04-16 17:06:47 +0100, Stephane Chazelas:
[...]
> So looking at the changelogs, we're missing:
[...]
> 2.6-beta{1..8}
[...]

A

zgrep -ahPo '2\.6-[\w-]*' <0-20>xx.tgz | sort -Vu

on the zsh-workers archive reveals a few more beta/test releases
and also the fact that Zoltan already used RCS back then, so if
we could get hold of that, we may have a great chunk of the
2.6..3.0.x history

2.6-b10
2.6-b11
2.6-b12
2.6-b18
2.6-beta
2.6-beta1
2.6-beta2
2.6-beta4
2.6-beta5
2.6-beta6-hzoli4
2.6-beta7
2.6-beta8
2.6-beta9
2.6-beta9-hzoli9
2.6-beta9-test
2.6-beta9-test2
2.6-beta9-test5
2.6-beta10
2.6-beta10-hzoli10
2.6-beta10-hzoli10-RCS
2.6-beta10-hzolipre10
2.6-beta10-hzolipre10-RCS
2.6-beta11
2.6-beta11-cb
2.6-beta11-test4
2.6-beta11-test7
2.6-beta11-test7-hzoli11
2.6-beta11-test9
2.6-beta11-test9-hzoli11
2.6-beta11-test9-hzoli11-RCS
2.6-beta11-test9-hzoli11-diff
2.6-beta11-test10
2.6-beta11-test11
2.6-beta11-test12
2.6-beta11-test12-hzoli11
2.6-beta11-test12-hzoli11-RCS
2.6-beta11-test12-hzoli11-diff
2.6-beta12
2.6-beta12-test1
2.6-beta12-test2
2.6-beta13
2.6-beta13-hzoli12
2.6-beta13-hzoli12-RCS
2.6-beta13-hzoli13
2.6-beta13-hzoli13-RCS
2.6-beta13-patched
2.6-beta14
2.6-beta15
2.6-beta15orig
2.6-beta15-hzoli14
2.6-beta15-hzoli14-RCS
2.6-beta16
2.6-beta17
2.6-beta18
2.6-beta18-test1
2.6-beta19
2.6-beta20
2.6-beta20-test1
2.6-beta21
2.6-betat17
2.6-test2

Re: Pre vcs versions of zsh

[Daniel Shahaf]

Stephane Chazelas wrote on Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 17:06:47 +0100:
> 2021-04-16 16:03:42 +0100, Stephane Chazelas:
> [...]
> > Besides the links I've already given (https://mirrors.ircam.fr/pub/zsh/old/ and

That looks like a mirror of rsync.zsh.org::pub/old/.

> > https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware-2.1/source/ap/zsh/zsh-2.4.306.tar.gz)
> > the earlier ones posted to usenet can be found raw (as usenet
> > articles with shar archives inside) at:
> > 
> > 1.0:
> > 
> > https://sourceforge.net/projects/utzoo/files/news133f1.tar.bz2
> > in:
> > 
> > b194/alt/sources/2805:Subject: zsh - a ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 1 of 8)
> > b194/alt/sources/2806:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 2 of 8)
> > b194/alt/sources/2807:Subject: zsh - a ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 3 of 8)
> > b194/alt/sources/2808:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 4 of 8)
> > b194/alt/sources/2809:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 5 of 8)
> > b194/alt/sources/2810:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 6 of 8)
> > b194/alt/sources/2811:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 7 of 8)
> > b194/alt/sources/2812:Subject: zsh - ksh/tcsh-like shell (part 8 of 8)
> > 
> > 2.0 to 2.00.03:
> > 
> > http://ftp.fi.netbsd.org/pub/misc/archive/comp.sources.misc/volume18/zsh2.00/
> [...]
> 
> There's also:
> 
> http://grumbeer.dyndns.org/ftp/cdroms/infomagic/9508/infomagic9508_disc2/system/Shells/zsh-2.6-beta9.tar.gz

Thanks.  Here's what I've fetch so far:

>>> % ls *
>>> Bart-users-26658:
>>> 
>>> llua-users-26657:
>>> zsh-1.0.git     zsh-2.0.0.git   zsh-2.1.0.git   zsh-2.2.0.git   zsh-2.3.1.git   zsh-2.5.0.git
>>> 
>>> Stephane-infra-312:
>>> old-zsh.tar.xz
>>> 
>>> Stephane-users-26672:
>>> news133f1.tar.bz2       part04.gz               part08.gz               part12.gz               patch01a.gz             patch02c.gz             patch03a.gz
>>> part01.gz               part05.gz               part09.gz               part13.gz               patch01b.gz             patch02d.gz             patch03b.gz
>>> part02.gz               part06.gz               part10.gz               part14.gz               patch02a.gz             patch02e.gz             patch03c.gz
>>> part03.gz               part07.gz               part11.gz               part15.gz               patch02b.gz             patch02f.gz             patch03d.gz
>>> 
>>> Stephane-users-26673:
>>> Stephane-users-26663    zsh-2.4.306.tar.gz      zsh-2.6-beta9.tar.gz

cwd here is the private lists' archive directory on zsh.org.  I chose
that directory because it's already set to be backed up, but isn't
public; I didn't want to serve random files that would look like zsh
historical artifacts but may or may not be what they seem to be.

Eric's stuff are «git clone --mirror» clones.

Some of the data in old-zsh.tar.xz is already in pub/old/, but I didn't
want to start picking and choosing.

Bart's rpi.edu stuff isn't fetched yet because «wget -r -np» doesn't
seem to be a very efficient or netiquettey way of grabbing that dataset.
Anyone has a better idea?

Cheers,

Daniel