Revision Control System ( RCS )

Why use RCS? If you are doing incremental development it is nice to save a snapshot of your work at different stages. This way if you have something that works. And you have tested it so you know it works. Then you often would like to save your files in their current state. Least you break something while hacking at 3:00 a.m. while pumped up on 5 cans of Jolt Cola. You at least would have the recourse of retrieving at least a partially working copy.

The neophyte approach to doing this is to keep a directory called "working" below the one you are doing development in. Every time you want to save a state you copy all the files you have changed into the "working" directory. Or even more problematical is to keep various versions in the same directory under a variety of names.

Using these approaches... sooner or later you are going to shoot yourself in the foot. Sometimes with a large caliber weapon. Using RCS is a much better approach. [ This is regardless of the language you are developing in. RCS works with C, Pascal, Lisp , ..... lots of different kinds of files ]

The following are two files that explain RCS.

rcs.ps

This is a file (size, 141433) that contains postscript for a short tutorial on the use of RCS. It is taken from the GNU distribution of RCS. [ To avoid the Postscript Viewer use this link rcs.postscript ] from a Unix box type:
lpr -Pprinter-name rcs.ps
to get a hardcopy (replace printer-name with the appropriate name).

rcs_func.ms

This is a file (size, 3684 ) file that contains some troff code to print out a one page description of the functionality of RCS. [Basically, a one page "advertisement"]. On a unix box type:
groff -ms -Tascii rcs_func.ms
to view on your screen.
groff -ms rcs_func.ms | lpr -Pprinter-name
to print a version out to a Postscript printer ( replace "printer-name" above with the appropriate name ). [ If your system doesn't have groff you can use nroff. ]

You can also make RCS and Emacs work together. See the VC section of your friendly emacs manual to see how this works.

Last modified: by Lyman S. Taylor(lyman@cc.gatech.edu)

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(c) copyright Lyman S. Taylor 1995, All rights reserved