Re: [Lynx-dev] A VCS for lynx

[Thomas Dickey]

On Sat, Feb 18, 2023 at 04:07:02PM +0100, Axel Beckert wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
> 
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 04:22:02PM -0500, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 04:56:48PM +0100, Axel Beckert wrote:
> > > On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 02:38:24PM +0000, Tom Schwindl wrote:
> > > > I wonder if there is interest in a VCS for doing development work.
> > > 
> > > AFAIK Lynx is actually developed using a VCS, namely CVS.
> > 
> > actually RCS
> 
> Thanks for the correction!
> 
> I actually had forgotten that CVS is based on top of RCS and that
> these tags are coming from the RCS part of CVS.
> 
> > offhand, the only program that I work on that was in CVS was xterm
> > 
> > https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.html#related-sources
> 
> Might be the reason why I had CVS in mind for your projects, too. But
> more likely is that I never worked with pure RCS, just with CVS.
> 
> > but that stopped in 2006.
> 
> I see.
> 
> > https://invisible-island.net/lynx/lynx-develop.html#patches
> 
> Never heard of PRCS before though.

I had only heard about it because Klaus Weide decided to use it
(starting in March 1997).

https://prcs.sourceforge.net/

        PRCS, the Project Revision Control System, is the front end to a set of
        tools that (like CVS) provide a way to deal with sets of files and
        directories as an entity, preserving coherent versions of the entire
        set.  PRCS was designed primarily by Paul N.  Hilfinger, with input and
        modifications by Luigi Semenzato and Joshua MacDonald.  PRCS is written
        and maintained by Joshua MacDonald.  Its purpose is similar to that of
        SCCS, RCS, and CVS, but (according to its authors, at least), it is
        much simpler than any of those systems.  This page is where information
        on the latest developments in PRCS can be found.  The current release
        of PRCS is 1.3.1.  Version 1.0 was released on September 3, 1996.

Though the page says the most recent release was in 2004, the related
NEWS file is dated October 2001.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/BFb0053876

        PRCS is an attempt to provide a version-control system for collections
        of files with a simple operational model, a clean user interface, and
        high performance.  PRCS is characterized by the use of project
        description files to input most commands, instead of a point-and-click
        or a line-oriented interface.  It employs optimistic concurrency
        control and encourages operations on the entire project rather than
        individual files.  Although its current implementation uses RCS in the
        back-end, the interface completely hides its presence.  PRCS is free. 
        This paper describes the advantages and disadvantages of our approach,
        and discusses implementation issues.

Updating the project-files wasn't straightforward, but I only had to do
that long ago.  It was written in C++ (whose standardization in the 1990s
was kind of lacking, making it not simple to continue using it).

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
https://invisible-island.net

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