Revision Control System
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For revision control systems in general, see Revision control.
The Revision Control System (RCS) is a software implementation of revision control that automates the storing, retrieval, logging, identification, and merging of revisions. RCS is useful for text that is revised frequently, for example programs, documentation, procedural graphics, papers, and form letters. RCS is also capable of handling binary files, though with reduced efficiency and efficacy. Revisions are stored with the aid of the diff utility.
RCS was initially developed in the 1980s by Walter F. Tichy while he was at Purdue University. It is now part of the GNU Project, but is still maintained by Purdue University.
The OpenRCS project is a BSD licensed rewrite of the original RCS. OpenRCS was written by Jean-Francois Brousseau, Joris Vink, Niall O'Higgins, and Xavier Santolaria.
Because it operates only on single files, has no way of working with an entire project, nor allows multiple users to work on a file simultaneously, it has been superseded by CVS and other packages capable of supporting more complex projects, for such projects. In single-user scenarios, such as server configuration files or automation scripts, it may still be the preferred revision control tool as it's simple and no daemon needs to run for it to work. CVS was originally built upon RCS.
[edit] Reference
- Walter F. Tichy: RCS--A System for Version Control. In: Software--Practice and Experience. July 1985. Volume 15. Number 7. Pages 637-654. References to the paper at CiteSeer
