paterra@cs.odu.edu (Frank C. Paterra) (08/24/90)
We're looking for a commercial product that runs on DOS, Unix, or VMS and supports document markup and editing at multiple remote sites but retains final change control management at a central site. Text-only is adequate, but management and or editing of engineering type graphics would be a plus. Network Technologies Internation offered a product in 1987 called docuFORUM that seemed to address these needs, but we can't raise them now. Any other products out there? -- Frank Paterra paterra@cs.odu.edu
ngb@otter.hpl.hp.com (Neal Baker) (08/24/90)
I am in a team which has exactly the requirments of a joint authoring package as you, and we find that 'rcs' under unix is adequate. We hold our central master files on a server and each work on our own copies on individual workstations. When an update is complt5ete we check the file back to the server, an action overseen by rcs. Rcs will maintain a tree structure of versions, any historical version or lineage can be retrieved. Remote file access (rfa) allows the workstations each to mount the remote server disk so that it appears as part of the workstation's directory structure. The version of unix that we use is Hewlett Packard's HP-UX v7.0 but I don't know whether rcs is provided by other vendors. The manual entry for rcs follows. Neal Baker Hewlett Packard Laboratories Filton Road Bristol, England ngb@hplb.hp.co.uk _________________________________________________________________________ RCS(1) RCS(1) NAME rcs - change RCS file attributes SYNOPSIS rcs [ options ] file ... DESCRIPTION Rcs creates new RCS files or changes attributes of existing ones. An RCS file contains multiple revisions of text, an access list, a change log, descriptive text, and some control attributes. For rcs to work, the caller's login name must be on the access list, except if the access list is empty, if the caller is the owner of the file or the superuser, or if the -i option is present. The caller of the command must have read/write permission for the directory containing the RCS file and read permission for the RCS file itself. Rcs creates a semaphore file in the same directory as the RCS file to prevent simultaneous update. For changes, rcs always creates a new file. On successful completion, rcs deletes the old one and renames the new one. This strategy makes links to RCS files useless. Files ending in ",v" are RCS files, all others are working files. If a working file is given, rcs tries to find the corresponding RCS file first in directory ./RCS and then in the current directory, as explained in rcsintro(5). Options -alogins Appends the login names appearing in the comma-separated list logins to the access list of the RCS file. -Aoldfile Appends the access list of oldfile to the access list of the RCS file. -cstring Sets the comment leader to string. The comment leader is printed before every log message line generated by the keyword $Log$ during check out (see co(1)). This is useful for programming languages without multi-line comments. During rcs -i or initial ci(1), the comment leader is guessed from the suffix of the working file. -e[logins] Erases the login names appearing in the comma-separated list logins from the access list of the RCS file. If logins is omitted, the entire access list is erased. Hewlett-Packard Company - 1 - HP-UX Release 7.0: Sept 1989 RCS(1) RCS(1) -i Creates and initializes a new RCS file, but does not deposit any revision. If the RCS file has no path prefix, rcs tries to place it first into the subdirectory ./RCS, and then into the current directory. If the RCS file already exists, an error message is printed. -l[rev] Locks the revision with number rev. If a branch is given, the latest revision on that branch is locked. If rev is omitted, the latest revision on the trunk is locked. Locking prevents overlapping changes. A lock is removed with ci(1) or rcs -u (see below). -L Sets locking to strict. Strict locking means that the owner of an RCS file is not exempt from locking for check in. This option should be used for files that are shared. -nname[:[rev]] Associates the symbolic name name with the branch or revision rev. Rcs prints an error message if name is already associated with another number. If rev is omitted, the symbolic name is associated with the latest revision on the trunk. If :rev is omitted, the symbolic name is deleted. -Nname[:[rev]] Same as -n, except that it overrides a previous assignment of name. -orange Deletes ("obsoletes") the revisions given by range. A range consisting of a single revision number means that revision. A range consisting of a branch number means the latest revision on that branch. A range of the form rev1-rev2 means revisions rev1 to rev2 on the same branch, -rev means from the beginning of the branch containing rev up to and including rev, and rev- means from revision rev to the head of the branch containing rev. None of the outdated revisions may have branches or locks. -q Quiet mode; diagnostics are not printed. -sstate[:rev] Sets the state attribute of the revision rev to state. If rev is omitted, the latest revision on the trunk is assumed. If rev is a branch number, the latest revision on that branch is assumed. Any identifier is Hewlett-Packard Company - 2 - HP-UX Release 7.0: Sept 1989 RCS(1) RCS(1) acceptable for state. A useful set of states is Exp (for experimental), Stab (for stable), and Rel (for released). By default, ci(1) sets the state of a revision to Exp. -t[txtfile] Writes descriptive text into the RCS file (deletes the existing text). If txtfile is omitted, rcs prompts the user for text supplied from the standard input, terminated with a line containing a single "." or control-D. Otherwise, the descriptive text is copied from the file txtfile. If the -i option is present, descriptive text is requested even if -t is not given. The prompt is suppressed if the standard input is not a terminal. -u[rev] Unlocks the revision with number rev. If a branch is given, the latest revision on that branch is unlocked. If rev is omitted, the latest lock held by the caller is removed. Normally, only the locker of a revision may unlock it. Somebody else unlocking a revision breaks the lock. This causes a mail message to be sent to the original locker. The message contains a commentary solicited from the breaker. The commentary is terminated with a line containing a single "." or control-D. -U Sets locking to non-strict. Non-strict locking means that the owner of a file need not lock a revision for check in. This option should NOT be used for files that are shared. The default (-L or -U) is determined by your system administrator. Access Control Lists (ACLs) Do not add optional ACL entries to an RCS file, because they are deleted when the file is updated. The resulting access modes for the new file might not be as desired. DIAGNOSTICS The RCS filename and the revisions outdated are written to the diagnostic output. The exit status always refers to the last RCS file operated upon, and is 0 if the operation was successful, 1 if unsuccessful. EXAMPLES The command: Hewlett-Packard Company - 3 - HP-UX Release 7.0: Sept 1989 RCS(1) RCS(1) rcs -ajane,mary,dave,jeff vision adds the names jane, mary, dave, and jeff to the access list of the RCS file vision,v. The command: rcs -c'tab*' vision sets the comment leader to tab* for the file vision. The command: rcs -Nsso/6_0:38.1 vision associates the symbolic name sso/6_0, with revision 38.1 of the file vision. The command: rcs -l38.1 vision,v locks revision 38.1 of the file vision,v so that only the locker is permitted to check in (see ci(1)) the next revision of the file. This command prevents two or more people from simultaneously revising the same file and inadvertently overwriting each other's work. AUTHOR Rcs was developed by Walter F. Tichy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907. Revision Number: 3.0; Release Date: 83/05/11. Copyright 1982 by Walter F. Tichy. SEE ALSO co(1), ci(1), rcsdiff(1), rcsintro(5), rcsmerge(1), rlog(1), rcsfile(4), acl(5). Hewlett-Packard Company - 4 - HP-UX Release 7.0: Sept 1989
janssen@parc.xerox.com (Bill Janssen) (08/30/90)
In article <20040001@otter.hpl.hp.com> ngb@otter.hpl.hp.com (Neal Baker) writes:
but I don't know whether rcs is provided by other vendors.
RCS is available on the GNU "prerelease software" tape, available for $150 from
Free Software Foundation, Inc.
675 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-876-3296
The tape includes:
* GCC (the GNU C Compiler, including COFF support)
* G++ (the C++ front end to GCC)
* lib-g++ (the G++ class library)
* NIH Class Library (formerly known as OOPS)
* Bash (GNUs' Bourne Again SHell)
* Bison (a free, compatible replacement for yacc)
* Flex (Vern Paxson fast rewrite of lex)
* Ghostscript (a Postscript interpreter)
* Gawk (the GNU implementation of the AWK programming language)
* Gas (the GNU Assembler)
* GDB (beta version of the GNU source-level C debugger)
* Gnuplot (an interactive mathematical plotting program)
* Compress (a file compression program)
* Perl (version 3.0; a programming language interpreter)
* RCS (Revision Control System)
* CVS (Concurrent Control System)
* GNU object file utilities (ar, ld, make, gprof, size, nm,
strip, ranlib, et al.)
* other GNU utilities (make, diff, grep, tar, et al.)
* GNU GO (the GNU implementation of the game of GO)
* the freed files from the 4.3BSD-Tahoe distribution
You can also FTP it from a number of sources, the canonical one of which
seems to be "arthur.cs.purdue.edu" (128.10.2.1).
Bill
--
Bill Janssen janssen@parc.xerox.com (415) 494-4763
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California 94304