RCS and SCCS

[g-rh at cca.UUCP]

In article <293 at intelisc.UUCP> joel at intelisc.UUCP (Joel Clark) writes:

>How well does this work if (as we are) you are working from 3 branches at once.
>We keep major branches for Development engineers, Sustaining engineers and
>Evaluation all in the same source file.  This allows us to proceed with project
>that may not go into production for 12-18 months based on the same sources
>that we ship, folding in the changes to the production code as they become
>solid.

Not very well.  In principle you can do it in SCCS using inclusion and
exclusion but it is rather messy.  Any system which uses interleaved deltas
and lets you do include/exclude of deltas can do it.  The problem with SCCS
for this is two-fold.  The mechanics of handling multiple tracks are awkward
and the SCCS nomenclature scheme is a problem when you are dealing with
multiple files.  The whole thing can be done with shell scripts and auxilliary
data files.  It's not very lovely.  Somebody may have posted the relevant
scripts -- if you can avoid it, you don't want to do it yourself.

There are commerical systems that do this sort of thing well.  We (SMDS) market
one called ADC.  I don't know of any public domain or near public domain
systems that do.  SUN's NSE and Apollo's DSEE really don't do multiple tracks
with change migration, as far as I can see, although they are nice development
environments.
-- 

In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
	Richard Harter, SMDS  Inc.