GNU RCS

Introduction to RCS

The Revision Control System (RCS) manages multiple revisions of files. RCS automates the storing, retrieval, logging, identification, and merging of revisions. RCS is useful for text that is revised frequently, including source code, programs, documentation, graphics, papers, and form letters.

RCS was first developed by Walter F. Tichy at Purdue University in the early 1980s. RCS design is an improvement from its predecessor Source Code Control System (SCCS) (see GNU CSSC). The improvements include an easier user interface and improved storage of versions for faster retrieval. RCS improves performance by storing an entire copy of the most recent version and then stores reverse differences (called "deltas"). RCS uses GNU Diffutils to find the differences between versions.

News

Latest release: 5.9.0 (2013-05-06)

• distribution now .tar.lz and .tar.xz
• planned retirement
  • configure option ‘--enable-compat2’
  • common option ‘-V’
• bugs fixed
  • ‘rcsmerge --help’ mentions ‘-A’, ‘-E’, ‘-e’
  • ‘ident -VN’ and ‘merge -VN’ now signal error
• new features
  • ident(1) recognizes Subversion "fixed-width keyword syntax"
  • new co(1) option ‘-S’ for "self-same" mode
  • several RCS commands "internalized" into rcs(1)
  • ‘--help’ output includes a one-line description
  • most long options can be recognized if partially specified
  • updated portability
  • new cross-compilation support
  • effects of ‘-VN’ (N ∈ {3,4,5}) documented
• maintenance tools updated
  • gnulib-tool (GNU gnulib 2013-05-01 06:14:19) 0.0.7913-5191

Downloading RCS

RCS source code can be found in the subdirectory /gnu/rcs/ on your favorite GNU mirror. For other ways to obtain RCS, please read How to Get GNU Software.

RCS source distributions for Unix and GNU systems and the latest Windows and DOS binaries can also be found at the Purdue RCS Homepage. Files can alternately be downloaded from the Purdue FTP site ftp://ftp.cs.purdue.edu/pub/RCS/.

Documentation

The official manual for RCS is online in several formats, as well as the original troff file for Tichy's paper RCS: A System for Version Control (1991) (troff, PostScript, PDF). Additional sources of RCS documentation can be found at the Purdue RCS Homepage.

You may also find more information about RCS by looking at man pages (man foo at the shell prompt) on your system, including:

rcs

rcsfile

ci

co

rcsdiff

rlog

rcsmerge

rcsclean

rcsfreeze

Mailing Lists/Newsgroups

RCS has two mailing lists: <help-rcs@gnu.org> and <bug-rcs@gnu.org>.

The main discussion list is <help-rcs@gnu.org>, and is used to discuss all aspects of RCS, including questions and help.

To subscribe to any RCS mailing list, please send an empty mail with a Subject: header line of just "subscribe" to the relevant -request list. For example, to subscribe yourself to the help list, you would send mail to <help-rcs-request@gnu.org> with no body and a Subject: header line of just "subscribe".

There exist web archives and web interfaces for subscription to these mailing lists.

• Bug-rcs -- Bug reports for the GNU Revision Control System
• Help-rcs -- Users list for the GNU Revision Control System

There is one newsgroup related to RCS - comp.software.config-mgmt (newsgroup archives).

Request an Enhancement

If you would like any new feature to be included in future versions of RCS, please visit the RCS project pages or send a request to <help-rcs@gnu.org>.

Please remember that development of RCS is a volunteer effort, and you can also contribute to its development. For information about contributing to the GNU Project, please read How to help GNU.

Report a Bug

If you think you have found a bug in RCS, then you should either file a bug report at the RCS project pages, or send as complete a report as possible to <bug-rcs@gnu.org>. For usage problems, please send a recipe that duplicates the error. A recipe is the sequence of shell commands executed that duplicates the behavior.

For compilation and portability issues, you should ideally include the output you get from running config.guess, the text you see when you run and configure the software, and any patches made with diff -u5 which fix the problem.

Development

You may browse the current RCS sources or view the RCS project pages on Savannah.

Return to GNU's home page.

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.

Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@gnu.org (and bug-rcs@gnu.org for this page in particular), and send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

Copyright (C) 2000, 2003, 2006, 2010-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: 2013-05-06 10:15:03 UTC ttn