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NEWS for GNU RCS (Revision Control System)
See the end for copying conditions.
- 5.9.0 | 2013-05-06
- distribution now .tar.lz and .tar.xz
If you have GNU tar, you can use "tar xf" and it will DTRT.
If not, you can use "lzip -dc TARBALL | tar xf -" to unpack
the .tar.lz, or "xz -dc TARBALL | tar xf -" for the .tar.xz.
- planned retirement
- configure option ‘--enable-compat2’
This option enables reading of files written by RCS 2.x (before
RCS was GNU, even), but the file format became obsolete in 1982.
Support for it WILL BE REMOVED in a near future GNU RCS release.
- common option ‘-V’
This option is obsoleted by ‘--version’ (since 5.8, 2011-08-30).
Support for it WILL BE REMOVED in some future GNU RCS release.
Its use now produces a warning to stderr.
Please note that ‘-VN’ (N ∈ {3,4,5}) is a separate issue.
- bugs fixed
- ‘rcsmerge --help’ mentions ‘-A’, ‘-E’, ‘-e’
These options are accepted and internally passed to diff3(1).
- ‘ident -VN’ and ‘merge -VN’ now signal error
For these commands, the argument to ‘-V’ has no meaning.
Previously, such invocations would display version info,
ignoring the arg. Now they signal a "bad option" error.
- new features
- ident(1) recognizes Subversion "fixed-width keyword syntax"
In addition to the normal keyword pattern, for Subversion 1.2
(and later) compatability, ident(1) also recognizes patterns
having one of the forms:
$KEYWORD:: TEXT $
;; two colons and space after keyword
;; space before ending $
$KEYWORD:: TEXT#$
;; two colons and space after keyword
;; hash before ending $
- new co(1) option ‘-S’ for "self-same" mode
In this mode, the owner of a lock is unimportant, just that it
exists. Effectively, this prevents you from checking out the
same revision twice.
$ whoami
ttn
$ co -l -f z
RCS/z,v --> z
revision 1.1 (locked)
done
$ co -S -l -f z
RCS/z,v --> z
co: RCS/z,v: Revision 1.1 is already locked by ttn.
- several RCS commands "internalized" into rcs(1)
As part of an ongoing effort to modernize the command-line
interface of GNU RCS, the previously standalone programs:
ci, co, rcs, rcsclean, rcsdiff, rcsmerge, rlog
can now be invoked as "rcs PROGRAM". In this case, we call
PROGRAM a "command", and also provide some aliases. E.g., you
can type "rcs diff" in addition to "rcs rcsdiff" (and "rcsdiff",
of course). We plan to support standalone (w/o "rcs" prefix)
invocation from the shell at least through the 5.x series of
releases -- not indefinitely, but for a good while, yet.
The rcs(1) program itself now supports ‘--commands’ to list all
the commands, ‘--aliases’ to list their aliases, as well as
‘--help COMAMND’ to show the help for COMMAND.
Note that programs ident(1) and merge(1) remain standalone.
Lastly, in the manual, section "Invoking rcs" now describes both
"modern" and "legacy" usages. Also, the internalized commands
invocations mentions both "rcs COMMAND" and "PROGRAM" styles.
- ‘--help’ output includes a one-line description
E.g., "merge --help" says: "Three-way file merge".
- most long options can be recognized if partially specified
With the exception of "rcs --help COMMAND", where "--help" must
be spelled out in full, all long options can now be recognized
even if partially specified. For example, "rcs --al" is
recognized as "rcs --aliases".
- updated portability
Several more Gnulib (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib) modules
are now in use.
- new cross-compilation support
The configure script now assigns "pessimistic defaults" when
cross-compiling. See new section "cross-compilation" in README.
- effects of ‘-VN’ (N ∈ {3,4,5}) documented
See (info "(rcs) Misc common options").
- maintenance tools updated
- gnulib-tool (GNU gnulib 2013-05-01 06:14:19) 0.0.7913-5191
- 5.8.2 | 2013-04-04
- Bugs fixed
- Wrong symbolic name dereference
RCS 5.8 introduced a bug whereby commands would incorrectly
dereference a symbolic name (into a numerical revision number)
in the presence of multiple symbolic names that share a common
prefix. See tests/t803.
- ‘integrity’ value syntax better specified
The ‘integrity’ value (if present) is a string composed of a
system part followed by an optional user part, with formfeed
(^L, U+0C) separating the two. Unlike other string values, the
‘integrity’ string (either part) must NOT contain '@' (U+40).
If it does, RCS displays a "spurious '@' in `integrity' value"
error message and exits failurefully.
This change restores interop play-space for third-party tools
that was stricken w/ the RCS 5.8 top-level grammar freeze. Left
unspecified is how such tools should divvy up the user part.
- New manual chapter: RCS file format
This documents the RCS file format grammar and particulars,
adapted from rcsfile(5).
- Manpages refer to info documentation
They now recommend using "info rcs" for full documentation.
- Script to trim "junk at end of file" posted
The "junk at end of file" error occurs for some files due to RCS
5.8 being more strict about the syntax it accepts. You can use
‘trimrcs’ by Warren Jones:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-rcs/2013-01/msg00006.html
to remedy such files while we figure out how best to move such
functionality into RCS proper.
- Maintenance tools updated
- automake (GNU Automake) 1.13.1
- gnulib-tool (GNU gnulib 2013-03-19 16:08:47) 0.0.7899-34f84
- makeinfo (GNU Texinfo) 5.1
- 5.8.1 | 2012-06-05
- Bugs fixed
- Debug output removed
Due to an oversight, release 5.8 rlog included code to write
debugging output to stderr for invocations using the ‘-d’ option
and a date range (e.g., ‘rlog -d 2010<2012’).
- Criteria for avoiding read-only checks refined
For "make check", some test cases are inhibited if the user
running the test is not effectively blocked from writing a
purportedly read-only file, such as when "make check" is run by
the super user, or for certain (weird) NFS situations.
Previously, to determine this condition, we considered only the
operating system type, a very crude (and incomplete) proxy.
Now, we explicitly check with a shell sequence comprising the
umask(1) and test(1) commands, plus output-redirection.
- Regression in ‘-zLT’ handling
On a 64-bit x86 system, RCS 5.8 introduced a regression whereby:
rlog -zLT -d>2011-05-04
would select the correct entry but display its date always with
default (01) month and day, i.e., YYYY-01-01. This is now fixed
(see also tests/t320).
- Regression in ‘ci -d -T’ handling
RCS 5.8 introduced a regression whereby:
ci -l -d -T FILE
would set the mtime of RCS/FILE,v (the comma-v file) to the
epoch. This is now fixed (see also tests/t810).
- Use ‘diff --label’ instead of ‘diff -L’
Previously, RCS used GNU diff's ‘-L’ option. According to Paul
Eggert (a GNU diffutils maintainer):
That option has been undocumented since diffutils 2.8
(released in March 2002) and the option is intended to
be replaced sometime soon with a different meaning.
Now, RCS uses ‘diff --label’, thus immune to the planned change.
- Miscellaneous changes
- Make help extraction noisy (on failure)
- Silence some compiler warnings
- Increase coverage of "make check"
- Documentation improvements
- Manpage rcsintro(1) dropped
This manpage is redundant, and (arguably) should not have been
in section 1 in the first place.
- Use "Invoking COMMAND" instead of "COMMAND" as node names
This makes it easier for ‘info --usage COMMAND’ to DTRT, and
makes GNU (info "(standards) Manual Structure Details") happy.
- explicitly UTF-8
This is to prepare for a (future) GNU Texinfo release that
renders @code in a more pretty way when the encoding is UTF-8.
If you're reading this (from the future) with such a Texinfo at
hand, feel free to regenerate the docs in doc/ prior to install.
- CVS is not GNU
Previously, we incorrectly said "GNU CVS", succumbing to a
common misunderstanding. Now we know better.
- TAGS file no longer distributed
To create, configure normally and do "make TAGS".
- New configure script option ‘--enable-coverage’
Specifying ‘--enable-coverage’ causes ‘_Exit’ to be an alias for
‘exit’ and CFLAGS to append ‘--coverage’ if the compiler is GCC.
This is needed because the coverage machinery writes the .gcda
files only on ‘exit’.
This option is for maintainers; most people can ignore it.
- Portability improvements
- Use more gnulib modules
- Use portable Makefile subst-ref variable syntax
- Use portable shell command-output interpolation syntax
- Maintenance tools upgraded
- GNU Automake 1.12
- GNU Autoconf 2.69
- gnulib-tool (GNU gnulib 2012-06-03 16:29:00) 0.0.7432-f6c24-modified
- 5.8 | 2011-08-30
- License now GPLv3+ (see COPYING)
- Change in terminology: from "path" to "file name" (or "file-name")
However, if "path" intends "search path", we say so explicitly.
- Changes to the RCS package
- New documentation in Info format
On "make install", rcs.info is installed in $(infodir), with
title "GNU RCS <VERSION>" in dircategory "Version control".
The doc source is texinfo (released under GNU FDL 1.3), so you
can easily create output in HTML, PDF, etc.
- Dropped configure option: --with-diffutils
To specify non-GNU diffutils programs diff(1) and diff3(1), name
them using variables on the configure command-line. See README.
- Configuration more strict in some ways, more lax in others.
Before, part of the configuration was done at compile time.
Now, all of it is done by the configure script. Here are the
set of conditions which will cause the configure script to fail
(with a "could not find..." message):
- for --enable-mailer=PROG, ‘PROG’ not absolute;
- for diff(1), value of env var ‘DIFF’ not absolute;
- diff(1) not GNU diffutils compatible;
- for diff3(1), value of env var ‘DIFF3’ not absolute;
- for ed(1), value of env var ‘ED’ not absolute;
- no C99-capable compiler.
Here, "absolute" means "specified as an absolute filename".
On the flip side, configuration no longer checks for some
situations such as ‘sigaction’ yes, but ‘SA_SIGINFO’ no.
Most of the portability duties are now handled by gnulib.
- New configure option: --enable-suid[=setreuid]
This builds RCS with setuid support (the default). Optional
arg ‘setreuid’ means use setreuid(2) instead of seteuid(2).
- New configure option: --disable-mmap
This builds RCS without mmap(2), even if available. See README.
- New configure option: --enable-mailer=PROG
The feature whereby ci(1) sends mail when breaking a lock is now
disabled by default. To enable, specify ‘--enable-mailer=PROG’
to the configure script. See README.
- New configure option: --enable-compat2
This preponderantly unlikely to be used option allows RCS
commands to read RCS files written by RCS 2. See README.
- You can "make check" prior to "make install".
Doing "make check" automatically prepends to the ‘PATH’ env var
the value of ‘$(abs_top_builddir)/src’, so that the programs
co, rcsdiff, and rcsmerge can find their peers (co and merge).
Likewise, "make installcheck" prepends ‘$(DESTDIR)$(bindir)’.
Previously, you had to "make install" first and then arrange
for ‘$(DESTDIR)$(bindir)’ to be on ‘PATH’ "manually".
See tests/README for more info on the test suite.
- Bug fixes
- Remove all edit info when removing all revisions.
Previously, "rcs -o" (outdating) all revisions failed to
leave the RCS file in a consistent state; edit info (i.e.,
log message + diff(1) output) remained for the deleted revisions.
For example, this sequence of commands:
echo foo > foo
ci -q -i -t-desc -mHELLO foo
rcs -q -o1.1: foo
grep '@H' foo,v
used to display "@HELLO" to stdout.
Now, all revisions are completely removed.
- Code no longer uses mktemp(3).
Using mktemp(3) is a security risk. We use mkstemp(3) now.
Likewise, rcsfreeze.sh now uses mktemp(1).
- Misc manpage tweaks / fixes.
Document ‘rlog -q’; fix small merge.1 omission; add branch
labels in rcsfile.5; say "GNU RCS <VERSION>" in footer.
- Other changes
- All commands accept ‘--help’ and ‘--version’.
The help output includes an email address for bug reports.
For continuity, option ‘-V’ is now a synonym for ‘--version’.
Relatedly, commands no longer display usage info if given
a bad or malformed option. You can use ‘--help’ for that.
- A string of all digits is now valid for author, state.
This means you can set the author or state to, for example,
"000000" or "42". Previously, these would have caused a
"invalid identifier" or "invalid symbol" error.
- Env var RCS_MEM_LIMIT controls stdio threshold.
For speed, RCS uses memory-based routines for files up to
256 kilobytes, and stream-based (stdio) routines otherwise.
You can change this threshold value by setting the environment
variable ‘RCS_MEM_LIMIT’ to a non-negative integer, measured in
kilobytes. An empty ‘RCS_MEM_LIMIT’ value is silently ignored.
- RCS can now work with files larger than 2 gigabytes.
RCS now uses large file offsets (#define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64).
- Pass-through for RCS file ‘commitid SYMBOL’ now builtin.
Due to GNU CVS (Concurrent Versions System) using a compatible
file format as RCS for the RCS file, you can use RCS commands
to view and manipulate its contents. (Note, however, the next
NEWS item.)
This works well enough except for a small annoyance: CVS adds a
per-revision field called the "commitid" with an opaque (to RCS)
symbolic value. Previously, RCS commands would emit a warning
"unrecognized phrases" (unless given ‘-q’ on the command-line).
RCS commands now automatically support pass-through handling of
‘commitid SYMBOL’ (so ‘-q’ is no longer necessary).
- RCS file top-level grammar frozen.
The RCS file top-level grammar is now frozen; RCS no longer
supports pass-through operation of unrecognized key/data pairs
(called "newphrases" in the RCS 5.7 rcsfile(5) manpage).
To avoid painting ourselves into a corner, the grammar now
includes a new key ‘integrity’ with @-string value, whose
sub-grammar is not yet specified. (We intend to keep checksums
and other compacted redundancies in this field, for manipulation
by the commands in a future RCS 5.x release.) For upward
compatability, the commands in this release do not change this
field, although they silently read and write it (pass-through),
if present.
- RCS file syntax-validated earlier, completely.
Previously, RCS file syntax was validated lazily, and trailing
garbage was not detected (see bugfix above). Now, a top-level
validation is done on each access.
- Possible to specify an empty log message with ci -m, rcs -m.
The commands "ci -m" and "rcs -m" no longer error on an
empty log message. Their non-interactive behavior is now
consistent with the interactive invocation.
was: ci -m file < /dev/null # use stdin to avoid error
now: ci -m file # works fine, like so
Note that these commands actually store as the log message
the string: "*** empty log message ***".
- Date option accepts some more date-only formats
Date format ‘YYYY-DDD’ specifies a year and a day (1-366),
while format ‘YYYY-wWW-D’ specifies a year, an ISO week number
(0-53, 0 is a GNU RCS extension), and a day number (1-7, for
Monday through Sunday).
- Changes to rcsdiff
- New handling for option: -U N
This arranges to output N lines of unified-diff context.
Relatedly, the list of possible options passed to the underlying
diff(1) appears in both "rcsdiff --help" and in the manual.
- Refined "same-revision don't call diff" optimization
Normally, if the two revisions specified are the same, we avoid
calling the underlying diff(1) on the theory that it will
produce no output. This does not hold generally for ‘-y’
(--side-by-side) and ‘-D’ (--ifdef), such as when the revision
specified is by different symbolic names, so for those options
the optimization is disabled.
- 5.7 | 1995-06-16
Here is a brief summary of user-visible changes since 5.6.
New options:
‘-kb’ supports binary files.
‘-T’ preserves the modification time of RCS files.
‘-V’ prints the version number.
‘-zLT’ causes RCS to use local time in working files and logs.
‘rcsclean -n’ outputs what rcsclean would do, without actually doing it.
‘rlog -N’ omits symbolic names.
There is a new keyword ‘Name’.
Inserted log lines now have the same prefix as the preceding ‘$Log’ line.
Most changes for RCS version 5.7 are to fix bugs and improve portability.
RCS now conforms to GNU configuration standards and to Posix 1003.1b-1993.
Features new to RCS version 5.7, and possibly incompatible
in minor ways with previous practice, include:
- Inserted log lines now have the same prefix as the preceding ‘$Log’
line. E.g. if a $Log line starts with ‘// $Log’, log lines are
prefixed with ‘// ’. RCS still records the (now obsolescent)
comment leader inside RCS files, but it ignores the comment leader
unless it is emulating older RCS versions. If you plan to access a
file with both old and new versions of RCS, make sure its comment
leader matches its ‘$Log’ line prefix. For backwards compatibility
with older versions of RCS, if the log prefix is ‘/*’ or ‘(*’
surrounded by optional white space, inserted log lines contain ‘ *’
instead of ‘/*’ or ‘(*’; however, this usage is obsolescent and
should not be relied on.
- $Log string ‘Revision’ times now use the same format as other times.
- Log lines are now inserted even if -kk is specified; this simplifies
merging.
- ci's -rR option (with a nonempty R) now just specifies a revision
number R. In some beta versions, it also reestablished the default
behavior of releasing a lock and removing the working file. Now,
only the bare -r option does this.
- With an empty extension, any appearance of a directory named ‘RCS’
in a pathname identifies the pathname as being that of an RCS file.
For example, ‘a/RCS/b/c’ is now an RCS file with an empty extension.
Formerly, ‘RCS’ had to be the last directory in the pathname.
- rlog's -d option by default now uses exclusive time ranges.
E.g. ‘rlog -d"<T"’ now excludes revisions whose times equal T
exactly. Use ‘rlog -d"<=T"’ to get the old behavior.
- merge now takes up to three -L options, one for each input file.
Formerly, it took at most two -L options, for the 1st and 3rd input
files.
- ‘rcs’ now requires at least one option; this is for future expansion.
Other features new to RCS version 5.7 include:
- merge and rcsmerge now pass -A, -E, and -e options to the subsidiary
diff3.
- rcs -kb acts like rcs -ko, except it uses binary I/O on working
files. This makes no difference under Posix or Unix, but it does
matter elsewhere. With -kb in effect, rcsmerge refuses to merge;
this avoids common problems with CVS merging.
- The following is for future use by GNU Emacs 19's version control
package:
- rcs's new -M option causes it to not send mail when you break
somebody else's lock. This is not meant for casual use; see
rcs(1).
- ci's new -i option causes an error if the RCS file already exists.
Similarly, -j causes an error if the RCS file does not already
exist.
- The new keyword ‘Name’ is supported; its value is the name, if any,
used to check out the revision. E.g. ‘co -rN foo’ causes foo's
$Name...$ keyword strings to end in ‘: N $’.
- The new -zZONE option causes RCS to output dates and times using ISO
8601 format with ZONE as the time zone, and to use ZONE as the
default time zone for input. Its most common use is the -zLT
option, which causes RCS to use local time externally. You can also
specify foreign time zones; e.g. -z+05:30 causes RCS to use India
time (5 hours 30 minutes east of UTC). This option does not affect
RCS files themselves, which always use UTC; it affects only output
(e.g. rlog output, keyword expansion, diff -c times) and
interpretation of options (e.g. the -d option of ci, co, and rlog).
Bare -z restores the default behavior of UTC with no time zone
indication, and the traditional RCS date separator ‘/’ instead of
the ISO 8601 ‘-’. RCSINIT may contain a -z option. ci -k parses
UTC offsets.
- The new -T option of ci, co, rcs, and rcsclean preserves the
modification time of the RCS file unless a revision is added or
removed. ci -T sets the RCS file's modification time to the new
revision's time if the former precedes the latter and there is a new
revision; otherwise, it preserves the RCS file's modification time.
Use this option with care, as it can confuse ‘make’; see ci(1).
- The new -N option of rlog omits symbolic names from the output.
- A revision number that starts with ‘.’ is considered to be relative
to the default branch (normally the trunk). A branch number
followed by ‘.’ stands for the last revision on that branch.
- If someone else already holds the lock, rcs -l now asks whether you
want to break it, instead of immediately reporting an error.
- ci now always unlocks a revision like 3.5 if you check in a revision
like 3.5.2.1 that is the first of a new branch of that revision.
Formerly it was inconsistent.
- File names may now contain tab, newline, space, and '$'. They are
represented in keyword strings with \t, \n, \040, and \044. \ in a
file name is now represented by \\ in a keyword string.
- Identifiers may now start with a digit and (unless they are symbolic
names) may contain ‘.’. This permits author names like ‘john.doe’
and ‘4tran’.
- A bare -V option now prints the current version number.
- rcsdiff outputs more readable context diff headers if diff -L works.
- rcsdiff -rN -rN now suppresses needless checkout and comparison
of identical revisions.
- Error messages now contain the names of files to which they apply.
- Mach style memory mapping is now supported.
- The installation procedure now conforms to the GNU coding standards.
- When properly configured, RCS now strictly conforms to Posix 1003.1b-1993.
- 5.6 | 1993-03-25
Features new to RCS version 5.6 include:
- Security holes have been plugged; setgid use is no longer supported.
- co can retrieve old revisions much more efficiently. To generate
the Nth youngest revision on the trunk, the old method used up to N
passes through copies of the working file; the new method uses a
piece table to generate the working file in one pass.
- When ci finds no changes in the working file, it automatically
reverts to the previous revision unless -f is given.
- RCS follows symbolic links to RCS files instead of breaking them,
and warns when it breaks hard links to RCS files.
- ‘$’ stands for the revision number taken from working file keyword
strings. E.g. if F contains an Id keyword string, ‘rcsdiff -r$ F’
compares F to its checked-in revision, and ‘rcs -nL:$ F’ gives the
symbolic name L to F's revision.
- co and ci's new -M option sets the modification time of the working
file to be that of the revision. Without -M, ci now tries to avoid
changing the working file's modification time if its contents are
unchanged.
- rcs's new -m option changes the log message of an old revision.
- RCS is portable to hosts that do not permit ‘,’ in filenames.
(‘,’ is not part of the Posix portable filename character set.)
A new -x option specifies extensions other than ‘,v’ for RCS files.
The Unix default is ‘-x,v/’, so that the working file ‘w’ corresponds
to the first file in the list ‘RCS/w,v’, ‘w,v’, ‘RCS/w’ that works.
The non-Unix default is ‘-x’, so that only ‘RCS/w’ is tried.
Eventually, the Unix default should change to ‘-x/,v’ to encourage
interoperability among all Posix hosts.
- A new RCSINIT environment variable specifies defaults for options
like -x.
- The separator for revision ranges has been changed from ‘-’ to ‘:’,
because the range ‘A-B’ is ambiguous if ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘A-B’ are all
symbolic names. E.g. the old ‘rlog -r1.5-1.7’ is now ‘rlog
-r1.5:1.7’; ditto for ‘rcs -o’. For a while RCS will still support
(but warn about) the old ‘-’ separator.
- RCS manipulates its lock files using a method that is more reliable
under NFS.
- 5.5 | 1991-01-04
Features new to RCS version 5 include:
- RCS can check in arbitrary files, not just text files, if diff -a
works. RCS can merge lines containing just a single ‘.’ if diff3 -m
works. GNU diff supports the -a and -m options.
- RCS can now be used as a setuid program. See ci(1) for how users
can employ setuid copies of ci, co, and rcsclean. Setuid privileges
yield extra security if the effective user owns RCS files and
directories, and if only the effective user can write RCS
directories. RCS uses the real user for all accesses other than
writing RCS directories. As described in ci(1), there are three
levels of setuid support.
1. Setuid works fully if the seteuid() system call lets any process
switch back and forth between real and effective users, as
specified in Posix 1003.1a Draft 5.
2. On hosts with saved setuids (a Posix 1003.1-1990 option) and
without a modern seteuid(), setuid works unless the real or
effective user is root.
3. On hosts that lack both modern seteuid() and saved setuids,
setuid does not work, and RCS uses the effective user for all
accesses; formerly it was inconsistent.
- New options to co, rcsdiff, and rcsmerge give more flexibility to
keyword substitution.
- -kkv substitutes the default ‘$Keyword: value $’ for keyword
strings. However, a locker's name is inserted only as a file is
being locked, i.e. by ‘ci -l’ and ‘co -l’. This is normally the
default.
- -kkvl acts like -kkv, except that a locker's name is always
inserted if the given revision is currently locked. This was the
default in version 4. It is now the default only with when using
rcsdiff to compare a revision to a working file whose mode is that
of a file checked out for changes.
- -kk substitutes just ‘$Keyword$’, which helps to ignore keyword
values when comparing revisions.
- -ko retrieves the old revision's keyword string, thus bypassing
keyword substitution.
- -kv retrieves just ‘value’. This can ease the use of keyword
values, but it is dangerous because it causes RCS to lose track of
where the keywords are, so for safety the owner write permission
of the working file is turned off when -kv is used; to edit the
file later, check it out again without -kv.
- rcs -ko sets the default keyword substitution to be in the style of
co -ko, and similarly for the other -k options. This can be useful
with file formats that cannot tolerate changing the lengths of
keyword strings. However it also renders a RCS file readable only
by RCS version 5 or later. Use rcs -kkv to restore the usual
default substitution.
- RCS can now be used by development groups that span time zone
boundaries. All times are now displayed in UTC, and UTC is the
default time zone. To use local time with co -d, append ‘ LT’ to
the time. When interchanging RCS files with sites running older
versions of RCS, time stamp discrepancies may prevent checkins; to
work around this, use ‘ci -d’ with a time slightly in the future.
- Dates are now displayed using four-digit years, not two-digit years.
Years given in -d options must now have four digits. This change is
required for RCS to continue to work after 1999/12/31. The form of
dates in version 5 RCS files will not change until 2000/01/01, so in
the meantime RCS files can still be interchanged with sites running
older versions of RCS. To make room for the longer dates, rlog now
outputs ‘lines: +A -D’ instead of ‘lines added/del: A/D’.
- To help prevent diff programs that are broken or have run out of
memory from trashing an RCS file, ci now checks diff output more
carefully.
- ci -k now handles the Log keyword, so that checking in a file with
-k does not normally alter the file's contents.
- RCS no longer outputs white space at the ends of lines unless the
original working file had it. For consistency with other keywords,
a space, not a tab, is now output after ‘$Log:’. Rlog now puts
lockers and symbolic names on separate lines in the output to avoid
generating lines that are too long. A similar fix has been made to
lists in the RCS files themselves.
- RCS no longer outputs the string ‘Locker: ’ when expanding Header or
Id keywords. This saves space and reverts back to version 3
behavior.
- The default branch is not put into the RCS file unless it is
nonempty. Therefore, files generated by RCS version 5 can be read
by RCS version 3 unless they use the default branch feature
introduced in version 4. This fixes a compatibility problem
introduced by version 4.
- RCS can now emulate older versions of RCS; see ‘co -V’. This may be
useful to overcome compatibility problems due to the above changes.
- Programs like Emacs can now interact with RCS commands via a pipe:
the new -I option causes ci, co, and rcs to run interactively, even
if standard input is not a terminal. These commands now accept
multiple inputs from stdin separated by ‘.’ lines.
- ci now silently ignores the -t option if the RCS file already
exists. This simplifies some shell scripts and improves security in
setuid sites.
- Descriptive text may be given directly in an argument of the form
-t-string.
- The character set for symbolic names has been upgraded from ASCII to
ISO 8859.
- rcsdiff now passes through all options used by GNU diff; this is a
longer list than 4.3BSD diff.
- merge's new -L option gives tags for merge's overlap report lines.
This ability used to be present in a different, undocumented form;
the new form is chosen for compatibility with GNU diff3's -L option.
- rcsmerge and merge now have a -q option, just like their siblings.
- rcsclean's new -n option outputs what rcsclean would do, without
actually doing it.
- RCS now attempts to ignore parts of an RCS file that look like they
come from a future version of RCS.
- When properly configured, RCS now strictly conforms with Posix
1003.1-1990. RCS can still be compiled in non-Posix traditional
Unix environments, and can use common BSD and USG extensions to
Posix. RCS is a conforming Standard C program, and also compiles
under traditional C.
- Arbitrary limits on internal table sizes have been removed. The
only limit now is the amount of memory available via malloc().
- File temporaries, lock files, signals, and system call return codes
are now handled more cleanly, portably, and quickly. Some race
conditions have been removed.
- A new compile-time option RCSPREFIX lets administrators avoid
absolute path names for subsidiary programs, trading speed for
flexibility.
- The configuration procedure is now more automatic.
- Snooping has been removed.
- 4.3 | 1989-11-18
Version 4 was the first version distributed by FSF.
Beside bug fixes, features new to RCS version 4 include:
The notion of default branch has been added; see rcs -b.
- 3.x | ????-??-??
Version 3 was included in the 4.3BSD distribution.
Copyright information:
Copyright (C) 2010-2013 Thien-Thi Nguyen
Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 Paul Eggert
Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
of this document, or of portions of it,
under the above conditions, provided also that they
carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
______________________________________________
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