Talk:Revision control
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In software development, SCCS, or Source Code Control System, was developed by Marc Rochkind at Bell Labs, for use on the UNIX system, based on the ability of the ed program to display the differences between two code streams, which is the diff algorithm. The database of differences is the mechanism for capturing the difference in versions of the source code of a program. SCCS based the database on the original version. RCS improved on this by capturing the difference from the current version. CVS is a descendant of RCS. Even Wikipedia uses version control when displaying the differences between versions of an article, which are merely text streams, just like the source code of a computer program.
The concepts behind SCCS and RCS are identical, but the names of the operations differed. SCCS used get and delta, for example, but RCS uses co and ci. To this day, RCS, CVS, PVCS, SourceSafe, ClearCase are all compatible with SCCS (or .scc compliant)
As in the operation of a public library, RCS used the fundamental operations of check-in and check-out, abbreviated ci and co. A programmer could check-in the source code of a program into RCS, which would time-stamp the submission. Any programmer could get a copy of the source code for use, but only one programmer at a time, could check-in a version of the source code of a program. If a programmer were to check-out a program, that signals that the current version is locked for changes, until that programmer checks-in the program. 169.207.115.71 09:26, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I removed this claim "(for instance, until recently, the Linux kernel)" from the following sentence(s):
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- At the simplest level, users can simply retain multiple copies of the different versions of the program, and number them appropriately. This simple approach has been used on many large software projects.
As far as I know, the linux kernel has been in revision control for a very long time. Burschik 09:13, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] "Revision" vs. "version"
Based on the redirection links, it appears that "revision control" is considered more canonical than "version control". I tried to make the article a bit more consistent by changing some references from "version control" to "revision control".
[edit] version number systems
I came hoping to find some information on how to number development in projects for example some products in development use alpha then beta development stages and some use version <1 like v0.21 and some use major.minor.maintainence systems such as v2.1.4 Could someone write something about this or does this not belong here, if so where would I find this. Nerdwithagun 08:03, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
[Edit] Some info on version numbers can be found here: Version.
[edit] FAQ
Can we use CVS in ather SO except Unix ans 2000. If not why? please explane...
[edit] Marketing Pitch
Information about McCabe is a marketing pitch, not something that belongs in an encyclopedia. I propose to remove it from this article and from Configuration Management.
- I just did. The same anonymous user also added it to Configuration management, in two different sections. If McCabe (or whoever this user was) wants their product listed on Wikipedia, they'll have to add it to the appropriate article(s). The links in these two articles are to general comparison and discussion web sites, not specific vendors. Imroy 06:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Atomicity
The link for atomic goes to a disambiguation page. Can we be more specific as to which of the atomicity links it should refer to?
- For the record, this is now pointing to Atomic transaction. I'm not sure if that's ideal (Atomic transaction is more from the DBMS point of view), but the only alternative targets i can find are more from the concurrent programming and/or hardare points of view, which aren't really an improvement. --Piet Delport 14:46, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
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- And now we have the Atomic commit page stub. Do we really want to have it, because all information contained there is also present here? --195.38.53.234 13:58, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] cleanup
see WP:CONTEXT. This article was targetted by a user targetting several other pages and overlinked it [1]. Its tagged for cleanup and I will try to get to it as time permits. Anyone willing to remove the overlinking before I get back to is as I'm still in the tagging phase would be greatly appreciated. --Crossmr 07:18, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Distributed revision control
I'm a little confused by the term "distributed revision control" as used in this article and also in the "comparison of revision control software".
Say programmers Alice and Bob want to make improvements to some piece of software currently stored in a repository on Trent's machine.
- Alice checks out the latest version from Trent's machine. Bob has to wait until Alice checks it back in.
- Alice and Bob check out the latest version from Trent's machine. Software on Trent's machine checks for conflicts when they try to check it back in. If there are any conflicts, the first person to check in "wins", and Trent's machine sends a message to the other explaining how to try again.
- Alice and Bob check out the latest version from Trent's machine. Software on Alice and Bob's machine checks for conflicts when they try to check it back in to Trent's machine. If there are any conflicts, the first person to check in "wins", and the other machine explains to its user how to try again.
- There is no central repository. Alice checks out the latest version from Trent's machine. Once Alice publishes her improvements, Bob checks out those improvements directly from Alice's machine.
Do any revision control systems work like this last example -- without any central repository? --68.0.120.35 20:23, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
- A better way to think about distributed revision control is that there is no such thing as checking in or out. Instead, every working copy is its own repository, and all changes are distributed by merging (pushing/pulling) between repositories.
- In other words, to a distributed revision control systems, all repositories are equal: having a "central repository" (or not) is purely a matter of naming convention. --Piet Delport 19:36, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
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- Thank you, that's exactly what I wanted to know. Since this definition of "distributed revision control" makes more sense to me than what is currently in the article, I'm going to substitute this definition into the article. --68.0.120.35 01:27, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Would this link be appropriate for the external links of the "revision control" article ?: "Please Stop Bugging Linus Torvalds About Subversion ... We, the Subversion development team, would like to explain why we agree that Subversion would not be the right choice for the Linux kernel."
Also WanDisco's software doesn't fit the description of a distributed revision control system. It is just a wrapper program around CVS or Subversion that keeps all servers in sync to look like a single repository. There is no pushing or pulling between repositories required by developers.
[edit] Lay Uses
Revision control is also useful for "lay people" (maybe even "la(z)y people) or at least I think it is. I think it's a good way to install software so that upgrades can be done with minimal pain.
Not being expert in this I can only suspect that svn, I mean Revision Control, is also useful in creating written documents. If this is the case isn't MediaWiki a form of Revision Control and shouldn't MW and Google Documents be discussed here as well?
I apologize if I am off topic, but I don't think I am alone in not understanding Revision Control, much less svn. If I am off topic please direct me to the appropriate article. --TMH 20:00, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
