tpchmara@wateng.UUCP (Thomas P. Chmara, Creative Slothfulness Inc.) (09/04/85)
(Did this go to both net.unix[-wizards]? It does now...)
Well, I got a reasonably large response to my query regarding the best
of SCCS and RCS, both in article and mail format. I won't reproduce the
letters herein, but I will give a brief conclusion derivable from the
notes I received:
SCCS: older, a standard.
"big, hairy, full of stuff that I've never used..."
"has a lot of stuff RCS doesn't...I don't know if it's really
useful..."
"facility for..revision history[s] is gross..."
"more cryptic...and less [!] features [than RCS]"
"sccs is a major pain in the a**."
"sccs documentation is better"
RCS: newer, cleaner.
"symbolic revision names a plus"
used by various software houses (I've withheld the names because I
haven't checked on the advisability of using them)
"RCS is MUCH easier to get started with"
"pretty smart at figuring out what you really want it to do"
"RCS is a clear winner"
"easy to use...more efficient retrieval mechanism...syntax of inline
comment fields nicer...facilties for developing and merging separate
branches of a project...ability to lavel a given revision number
symbolically...effective security system"
Most of the messages were complimentary to RCS, and pretty downright
derogatory when it came to SCCS. A few were good enough to explain some
of the technical issues (implementation details) to me. Sounds like
RCS is the way to go.
A side note: evidently, this is a religious issue which comes up
every once in a while. I'm sorry I revived it for those who've seen it
go by a thousand times, but by the number of responses I got who thought
it a good question and the requests for summaries, I'd say it was time
to go over it again: the net population has evidently gone through sufficient
turnover to warrant it.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond...
---tpc---
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