It depends. I've worked with both SCCS, RCS, Perforce and git. The way SCCS and RCS did it was a pain, but Perforce's was IMO more feature than bug. When Perfo

It depends. I've worked with both SCCS, RCS, Perforce and git. The way SCCS and RCS did it was a pain, but Perforce's was IMO more feature than bug. When Perforce told me "uh, X is editing this file you're just about to edit", talking to X was usually a good idea for some reason I wasn't aware of. Sometimes X was working on one issue and I on another, and the deeper cause was actually the same. Sometimes X had forgotten to check in some work and would do so immediately when I asked. Not always. But often enough that I liked those locks. (Hated the RCS/SCCS locks though. Those had far too much cost and offered too little value.)