3 ms·

Git wasn't released until 2005, so what did they use before then? I know it says they pulled the history from 24 snapshots.

BuildTheRobots 8y ago
iirc, Linux used to live inside of BitKeeper which was a paid for solution. I believe Linus wrote git as a replacement because he got fed up with the commercial licensing (even though they gave free copies to linux devs). Edit: this doesn't actually answer your question of where unix used to live, rather than linux though....
- brazzy 8y ago
  > I believe Linus wrote git as a replacement because he got fed up with the commercial licensing (even though they gave free copies to linux devs). No - BitKeeper revoked the free license because some guy (unrelated to Linux) wrote a client that reverse engineered more features than BitKeeper liked. And Linux actually used BitKeeper only between 2002 and 2005; prior to that time, it did not use a source control system at all.
  - self_awareness 8y ago
    The BitKeeper reverse engineering is a fun story to read: https://lwn.net/Articles/132938/ https://lwn.net/Articles/132938/ (and short!)
  - black-tea 8y ago
    They did use a system---tarballs and patches---but it was just a socially constructed system rather than rigorously enforced using software. Linus has often said he would have rather gone back to that system rather than use CVS or SVN.
    - cryptonector 8y ago
      Fortunately instead he created Git. I'm a fan of Git, though I'm aware many aren't.
  - black-tea 8y ago
    The funny thing is the "reverse engineering" involved telnetting into the server and typing "help".
    - d4rti 8y ago
      And if I recall correctly it sent back SCCS-style data
  - js2 8y ago
    The "some guy" was Samba/rsync developer Andrew Tridgell.
dboreham 8y ago
RCS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_Control_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_Control_System then SSCS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_Control_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_Control_System before 1972 I'm not sure..
- mcv 8y ago
  I assumed this history was meticulously reconstructed with a lot of hard work, but apparently Unix was one of the first systems maintained in SCCS. I guess the part from before SCCS was still meticulously reconstructed?
  - dboreham 8y ago
    Poking around a bit in the repo, I think the history prior to SCCS is just release snapshots. e.g. there is no history for the cat command in the PDP-7 Unix : https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/commits/Research-PDP7-Snapshot-Development/cat.s https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/commits/Rese...
deleted 8y ago
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BuildTheRobots 8y ago

iirc, Linux used to live inside of BitKeeper which was a paid for solution. I believe Linus wrote git as a replacement because he got fed up with the commercial licensing (even though they gave free copies to linux devs). Edit: this doesn't actually answer your question of where unix used to live, rather than linux though....

brazzy 8y ago
> I believe Linus wrote git as a replacement because he got fed up with the commercial licensing (even though they gave free copies to linux devs). No - BitKeeper revoked the free license because some guy (unrelated to Linux) wrote a client that reverse engineered more features than BitKeeper liked. And Linux actually used BitKeeper only between 2002 and 2005; prior to that time, it did not use a source control system at all.
- self_awareness 8y ago
  The BitKeeper reverse engineering is a fun story to read: https://lwn.net/Articles/132938/ https://lwn.net/Articles/132938/ (and short!)
- black-tea 8y ago
  They did use a system---tarballs and patches---but it was just a socially constructed system rather than rigorously enforced using software. Linus has often said he would have rather gone back to that system rather than use CVS or SVN.
  - cryptonector 8y ago
    Fortunately instead he created Git. I'm a fan of Git, though I'm aware many aren't.
- black-tea 8y ago
  The funny thing is the "reverse engineering" involved telnetting into the server and typing "help".
  - d4rti 8y ago
    And if I recall correctly it sent back SCCS-style data
- js2 8y ago
  The "some guy" was Samba/rsync developer Andrew Tridgell.

dboreham 8y ago

RCS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_Control_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_Control_System then SSCS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_Control_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_Control_System before 1972 I'm not sure..

mcv 8y ago
I assumed this history was meticulously reconstructed with a lot of hard work, but apparently Unix was one of the first systems maintained in SCCS. I guess the part from before SCCS was still meticulously reconstructed?
- dboreham 8y ago
  Poking around a bit in the repo, I think the history prior to SCCS is just release snapshots. e.g. there is no history for the cat command in the PDP-7 Unix : https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/commits/Research-PDP7-Snapshot-Development/cat.s https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/commits/Rese...

deleted 8y ago

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