7 ms·

The Source Code Control System (1975) [pdf]

mmastrac 6y ago
If you're wondering why you might choose SCCS over RCS for your next project, well: http://sccs.sourceforge.net/sccs_vs_rcs.html http://sccs.sourceforge.net/sccs_vs_rcs.html
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- emmelaich 6y ago
  GNU has a compatible program, CSSC.
- teddyh 6y ago
  If I ever wanted to use something like RCS, I would first take a serious look at SRC: http://www.catb.org/~esr/src/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/src/
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    It's pretty hard to take anything Eric S Raymond says seriously, and pretty revolting to look at so many of the things he has said, and he's certainly not easy to work with, so why would you recommend his software? As you surely know, Eric S Raymond has a long well documented track record of wildly inaccurate claims and outright racism and misogyny, and he regularly inflates and exaggerates his technical competency and achievements. Thomas Ptacek actually raised $100,000 to stop himself from tweeting vile ESR quotes: he actually raised money to cancel HIMSELF! I bet that's a lot more than ESR has raised on his SRC fundraising page that you linked to and endorsed. https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/966859542792458240 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/966859542792458240 Some choice quotes (you can pay me to stop, too!): https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833 ESR> Unfortunately, this doesn't cover the BLM crowd, which would have an average IQ of about 85 if it's statistically representative of Americans blacks as a whole. I've never tried to train anyone that dim and wouldn't want to. https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/657333910846742528 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/657333910846742528 https://www.dropbox.com/s/55ut8psqeb20tnj/Screenshot%202015-10-22%2018.12.56.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/55ut8psqeb20tnj/Screenshot%202015-... > I asked some friends, who tend to be quite nerdy but are mostly not programmers. The only response so far is Ada Lovelace. ESR> Figures. She doesn't deserve that reputation; "the first programmer" is pure hype created by political animals desperate to conjure up female role models. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13147038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13147038 ESR> I’m wondering about this because my wife Cathy asked me a simple question last night, and I realized I didn’t have an answer to it. “Are you” she asked “the most famous programmer in the world?” This was a question which I had, believe it or not, never thought about before. But it’s a reasonable one to ask, given recent evidence – notably, the unexpected success of my Patreon page. This is relevant because Patreon is mainly an arts-funding site – it’s clearly not designed for or by techies.
    - teddyh 6y ago
      Man, that is almost a textbook example of an ad hominem attack. I try to recommend some useful software, and you go on an unrelated rant about its author, in an obvious attempt to have him cancelled and all his works expunged. I’m sure all your claims can be either explained as inconsequential or disproven as false, but this is not the time and place for it. Take your ESR-bashing somewhere else.
      - DonHopkins 6y ago
        I want people to know about him, and what he's said. And so does he, even more than I do! So I'm doing him a favor, literally spreading his own words, and giving him a platform, not canceling him. You linked to his appeal for financial support. So did you already know all about him when you recommended his software, or were those quotes and his reputation for misogyny and racism news to you? You seem pretty Dunning-Kruger sure of yourself that all of my claims and evidence I linked to about ESR are "either explained as inconsequential or disproven as false", but you're wrong, so of course you don't want to discuss the person whose project and appeal for financial donations you linked to and endorsed.
        teddyh 6y ago
        > So did you already know about him when you recommended his software, or were those quotes news to you? I’m not discussing ESR here. I’m discussing you, and your transparent attempt to trap me and try and have me cancelled as well.
        DonHopkins 6y ago
        What are you even talking about? You are too discussing ESR here. You're the one who brought him up in the first place, and linked to his SRC fund raising page. How did I "trap" you into suddenly trying to change the subject? Who did I ask to "cancel" you? That's "physically impossible", as you would say. ;) Again: did you already know about ESR's racism and misogyny and narcissism, or not? Were those quotes news to you? Do you still dispute them? Is asking you those questions a "trap" that will "cancel" you if you answer, so now you want to change the subject? You're on record as having submitted two of his other ridiculously arrogant articles to Hacker News: "How to Become a Hacker" (3 points by teddyh on March 24, 2016), and "Things Every Hacker Once Knew" (7 points by teddyh on Jan 26, 2017), although there were few points and no comments on either. That proves you've read his articles and known of him for at least five years, and you're obviously a fan of his. So let's hear your side of the story, instead of changing the subject or canceling you, please. Were you seriously suggesting that ESR would be a good person to collaborate with on developing a source code control system, despite all the evidence? Please explain why. Do you still endorse contributing to his fundraising campaign that you linked to? Have you put your money where your mouth is by contributing to it yourself? I believe Thomas Ptacek's self-cancelation fundraising campaign is over, but it was a great idea, so how much will you pay me to cancel myself, stop quoting ESR, and change the subject? Funny how most of the people whining about cancel culture actually want to cancel other people themselves, while playing the victim, because they have reprehensible believes they can't defend, and don't want to face the consequences of their own words and deeds. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/19/nobody-loves-cancel-culture-more-than-republicans-do/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/19/nobody-lo... >Opinion: Nobody loves ‘cancel culture’ more than Republicans do >America, conservatives will tell you, is under siege by “cancel culture.” What they won’t tell you is that they couldn’t be happier about it, since it gives them a handy comeback to any criticism, and helps feed their supporters’ sense of victimization. >Consider the defense Donald Trump Jr. offered of Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s jaunt to Cancun while millions of his Texas constituents froze without power. >“The optics of that right now isn’t ideal,” Trump Jr. admitted in a video posted to social media, but “I’m not going to jump on this bandwagon of trying to cancel the guy.” Because Cruz is the real victim here.
  - geocar 6y ago
    src is a cute wrapper for rcs, but it has all of the same limitations of rcs, plus a few extra, so I hope you'd consider sccs/cssc if you wanted something "like rcs" but not. fossil is also a really interesting choice for an "easy setup" version control system, and it's definitely worth considering if you're looking at sccs/cssc: I've used it to log configuration changes for an application, the "push" functionality to centralise changes from tenants, and then I can store issues/tickets (and other metadata) on the configuration changes centrally.
emmelaich 6y ago
If you'd like to see Marc Rochkind's other stuff, go to https://basepath.com/new/books.php https://basepath.com/new/books.php I can particularly recommend Advanced UNIX Programming (2nd Edition) even though it is a little old.
- xpressvideoz 6y ago
  Wow, he was 66 when he authored an O'Reilly book on developing Chrome apps. That's very impressive. I wonder if I could have the same curiosity on future technologies when I reach that age.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - swiley 6y ago
    The idea that technology is a place for young people is simply a harmful myth as far as I can tell. Almost all of the most skilled developers I've met IRL are over 40.
    - jgalt212 6y ago
      I think you both said different things. Skill level does generally increase experience. Curiosity with the world does generally decrease with age / experience.
      - gumby 6y ago
        “Citation needed”. In my experience of people older than I, the opposite is true.
        jgalt212 6y ago
        > .. Wisdom is cultivated by and linked to curiosity [2], but this link has not received a large amount of attention in lifespan development research. Moreover, research on aging populations has often overlooked the role of curiosity in aging [3], despite curiosity demonstrating connections to enhancements in memory, health, wellbeing, and longevity [3,4,5]. Unfortunately, curiosity is also known to decline as individuals get older [3], and many adults cease to ask big and beautiful questions as they age [6]. ... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323716917_Curiosity_in_old_age_A_possible_key_to_achieving_adaptive_aging https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323716917_Curiosity... Curiosity in old age: A possible key to achieving adaptive aging
JNRowe 6y ago
Following on from some discussions about SCM history on here over the weekend I was poking around in the history of things too. The original 1986 CVS¹ is quite interesting from a historical prospective. Given that the implementation is just a bunch of scripts on top of RCS you can see how it plumbed together really easily. There is a note¹ on Grune's site, that explains the relationship between the scripts and the system people would more likely recognise as CVS(assuming you're old enough to recognise it at all). ¹ https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/usenet/ftp.uu.net/comp.sources.unix/volume6/cvs/ https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/usenet/... ² https://dickgrune.com/Programs/CVS.orig/CVS_BB_and_GNU https://dickgrune.com/Programs/CVS.orig/CVS_BB_and_GNU Edit: And I guess you might not recognise the archives in the first footnote either. They're shar files which can be extracted using the files as a script or more simply with unshar from sharutils³. ³ http://www.gnu.org/software/sharutils/ http://www.gnu.org/software/sharutils/
rbsmith 6y ago
This amazing paper holds a special place in my heart: my marked up 1992 copy serving me well when working as a graph and weave engineer on BitKeeper. To me, SCCS is both a marvel and a disappointment. A marvel because its graph and weave were so far ahead of its time. A disappointment is because for the most part, time didn't build on the innovations, with TeamWare and BitKeeper among the exceptions. Take the graph: storing history not just as a version graph, but also as a collection of deltas. The 3rd paragraph from end of section II: "The second kind of special delta is one which, when applied, explicitly forces others deltas to be applied or not, by either including or excluding them. A list of deltas to be included or excluded is specified when such a delta is created. The exclusion facility is most often used simply to correct mistakes. For example if, after delta 3.14 is added, it is found to be undesirable, the programmer might add delta 3.15 which excludes it. If the module is accessed at level 3.14, delta 3.14 itself would be applied. If the module is accessed at a level 3.15, though, delta 3.14 would not be applied. From the viewpoint of control, this form of error correction is safer than allowing the programmer to actually delete a delta, since no potentially necessary information is lost." Such advanced thinking from 1975! As for the for the brilliance of the weave, ... [1 - adding to mmastrac's reference of J. Schilling's wonderful SCCS pages] [1]. http://sccs.sourceforge.net/sccs_invention.html http://sccs.sourceforge.net/sccs_invention.html
- JNRowe 6y ago
  After seeing luckydude answer questions on the little thread the other evening, I'm wondering what other things the SCCS/BK folk think we should be doing better. What have we forgotten? luckydude mentioned real per-file history for example¹, and that pushed me to remember per-file comments as the thing I'd want back. Perhaps someone is listening. ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26207037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26207037
  - rbsmith 6y ago
    A reasonable direction to go, and I'll give sort of a non-response. For me, it's to take some time to absorb and celebrate this paper. If I go too quickly to doing better, I tend to miss the amazing. It also makes it easier for me to talk about other's contributions (like luckydude's many) to the state of the art, as then get into what could be better.
tal8d 6y ago
One thing only lightly hinted on is how sccs was designed to tightly couple the source files to the output object files. Imagine super fine grain symbol versioning + loads of metadata for large project management tools. There was also stuff related to version constraints, security, and dynamic dispatching. They had a very different definition of "source control". I still see some odd artifacts of it pop up every so often in AIX object files.

If you're wondering why you might choose SCCS over RCS for your next project, well: http://sccs.sourceforge.net/sccs_vs_rcs.html http://sccs.sourceforge.net/sccs_vs_rcs.html

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
emmelaich 6y ago
GNU has a compatible program, CSSC.
teddyh 6y ago
If I ever wanted to use something like RCS, I would first take a serious look at SRC: http://www.catb.org/~esr/src/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/src/
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  It's pretty hard to take anything Eric S Raymond says seriously, and pretty revolting to look at so many of the things he has said, and he's certainly not easy to work with, so why would you recommend his software? As you surely know, Eric S Raymond has a long well documented track record of wildly inaccurate claims and outright racism and misogyny, and he regularly inflates and exaggerates his technical competency and achievements. Thomas Ptacek actually raised $100,000 to stop himself from tweeting vile ESR quotes: he actually raised money to cancel HIMSELF! I bet that's a lot more than ESR has raised on his SRC fundraising page that you linked to and endorsed. https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/966859542792458240 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/966859542792458240 Some choice quotes (you can pay me to stop, too!): https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833 ESR> Unfortunately, this doesn't cover the BLM crowd, which would have an average IQ of about 85 if it's statistically representative of Americans blacks as a whole. I've never tried to train anyone that dim and wouldn't want to. https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/657333910846742528 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/657333910846742528 https://www.dropbox.com/s/55ut8psqeb20tnj/Screenshot%202015-10-22%2018.12.56.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/55ut8psqeb20tnj/Screenshot%202015-... > I asked some friends, who tend to be quite nerdy but are mostly not programmers. The only response so far is Ada Lovelace. ESR> Figures. She doesn't deserve that reputation; "the first programmer" is pure hype created by political animals desperate to conjure up female role models. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13147038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13147038 ESR> I’m wondering about this because my wife Cathy asked me a simple question last night, and I realized I didn’t have an answer to it. “Are you” she asked “the most famous programmer in the world?” This was a question which I had, believe it or not, never thought about before. But it’s a reasonable one to ask, given recent evidence – notably, the unexpected success of my Patreon page. This is relevant because Patreon is mainly an arts-funding site – it’s clearly not designed for or by techies.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    Man, that is almost a textbook example of an ad hominem attack. I try to recommend some useful software, and you go on an unrelated rant about its author, in an obvious attempt to have him cancelled and all his works expunged. I’m sure all your claims can be either explained as inconsequential or disproven as false, but this is not the time and place for it. Take your ESR-bashing somewhere else.
    - DonHopkins 6y ago
      I want people to know about him, and what he's said. And so does he, even more than I do! So I'm doing him a favor, literally spreading his own words, and giving him a platform, not canceling him. You linked to his appeal for financial support. So did you already know all about him when you recommended his software, or were those quotes and his reputation for misogyny and racism news to you? You seem pretty Dunning-Kruger sure of yourself that all of my claims and evidence I linked to about ESR are "either explained as inconsequential or disproven as false", but you're wrong, so of course you don't want to discuss the person whose project and appeal for financial donations you linked to and endorsed.
      - teddyh 6y ago
        > So did you already know about him when you recommended his software, or were those quotes news to you? I’m not discussing ESR here. I’m discussing you, and your transparent attempt to trap me and try and have me cancelled as well.
        DonHopkins 6y ago
        What are you even talking about? You are too discussing ESR here. You're the one who brought him up in the first place, and linked to his SRC fund raising page. How did I "trap" you into suddenly trying to change the subject? Who did I ask to "cancel" you? That's "physically impossible", as you would say. ;) Again: did you already know about ESR's racism and misogyny and narcissism, or not? Were those quotes news to you? Do you still dispute them? Is asking you those questions a "trap" that will "cancel" you if you answer, so now you want to change the subject? You're on record as having submitted two of his other ridiculously arrogant articles to Hacker News: "How to Become a Hacker" (3 points by teddyh on March 24, 2016), and "Things Every Hacker Once Knew" (7 points by teddyh on Jan 26, 2017), although there were few points and no comments on either. That proves you've read his articles and known of him for at least five years, and you're obviously a fan of his. So let's hear your side of the story, instead of changing the subject or canceling you, please. Were you seriously suggesting that ESR would be a good person to collaborate with on developing a source code control system, despite all the evidence? Please explain why. Do you still endorse contributing to his fundraising campaign that you linked to? Have you put your money where your mouth is by contributing to it yourself? I believe Thomas Ptacek's self-cancelation fundraising campaign is over, but it was a great idea, so how much will you pay me to cancel myself, stop quoting ESR, and change the subject? Funny how most of the people whining about cancel culture actually want to cancel other people themselves, while playing the victim, because they have reprehensible believes they can't defend, and don't want to face the consequences of their own words and deeds. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/19/nobody-loves-cancel-culture-more-than-republicans-do/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/19/nobody-lo... >Opinion: Nobody loves ‘cancel culture’ more than Republicans do >America, conservatives will tell you, is under siege by “cancel culture.” What they won’t tell you is that they couldn’t be happier about it, since it gives them a handy comeback to any criticism, and helps feed their supporters’ sense of victimization. >Consider the defense Donald Trump Jr. offered of Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s jaunt to Cancun while millions of his Texas constituents froze without power. >“The optics of that right now isn’t ideal,” Trump Jr. admitted in a video posted to social media, but “I’m not going to jump on this bandwagon of trying to cancel the guy.” Because Cruz is the real victim here.
- geocar 6y ago
  src is a cute wrapper for rcs, but it has all of the same limitations of rcs, plus a few extra, so I hope you'd consider sccs/cssc if you wanted something "like rcs" but not. fossil is also a really interesting choice for an "easy setup" version control system, and it's definitely worth considering if you're looking at sccs/cssc: I've used it to log configuration changes for an application, the "push" functionality to centralise changes from tenants, and then I can store issues/tickets (and other metadata) on the configuration changes centrally.

emmelaich 6y ago

If you'd like to see Marc Rochkind's other stuff, go to https://basepath.com/new/books.php https://basepath.com/new/books.php I can particularly recommend Advanced UNIX Programming (2nd Edition) even though it is a little old.

xpressvideoz 6y ago
Wow, he was 66 when he authored an O'Reilly book on developing Chrome apps. That's very impressive. I wonder if I could have the same curiosity on future technologies when I reach that age.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- swiley 6y ago
  The idea that technology is a place for young people is simply a harmful myth as far as I can tell. Almost all of the most skilled developers I've met IRL are over 40.
  - jgalt212 6y ago
    I think you both said different things. Skill level does generally increase experience. Curiosity with the world does generally decrease with age / experience.
    - gumby 6y ago
      “Citation needed”. In my experience of people older than I, the opposite is true.
      - jgalt212 6y ago
        > .. Wisdom is cultivated by and linked to curiosity [2], but this link has not received a large amount of attention in lifespan development research. Moreover, research on aging populations has often overlooked the role of curiosity in aging [3], despite curiosity demonstrating connections to enhancements in memory, health, wellbeing, and longevity [3,4,5]. Unfortunately, curiosity is also known to decline as individuals get older [3], and many adults cease to ask big and beautiful questions as they age [6]. ... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323716917_Curiosity_in_old_age_A_possible_key_to_achieving_adaptive_aging https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323716917_Curiosity... Curiosity in old age: A possible key to achieving adaptive aging

JNRowe 6y ago

Following on from some discussions about SCM history on here over the weekend I was poking around in the history of things too. The original 1986 CVS¹ is quite interesting from a historical prospective. Given that the implementation is just a bunch of scripts on top of RCS you can see how it plumbed together really easily. There is a note¹ on Grune's site, that explains the relationship between the scripts and the system people would more likely recognise as CVS(assuming you're old enough to recognise it at all). ¹ https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/usenet/ftp.uu.net/comp.sources.unix/volume6/cvs/ https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/usenet/... ² https://dickgrune.com/Programs/CVS.orig/CVS_BB_and_GNU https://dickgrune.com/Programs/CVS.orig/CVS_BB_and_GNU Edit: And I guess you might not recognise the archives in the first footnote either. They're shar files which can be extracted using the files as a script or more simply with unshar from sharutils³. ³ http://www.gnu.org/software/sharutils/ http://www.gnu.org/software/sharutils/

rbsmith 6y ago

This amazing paper holds a special place in my heart: my marked up 1992 copy serving me well when working as a graph and weave engineer on BitKeeper. To me, SCCS is both a marvel and a disappointment. A marvel because its graph and weave were so far ahead of its time. A disappointment is because for the most part, time didn't build on the innovations, with TeamWare and BitKeeper among the exceptions. Take the graph: storing history not just as a version graph, but also as a collection of deltas. The 3rd paragraph from end of section II: "The second kind of special delta is one which, when applied, explicitly forces others deltas to be applied or not, by either including or excluding them. A list of deltas to be included or excluded is specified when such a delta is created. The exclusion facility is most often used simply to correct mistakes. For example if, after delta 3.14 is added, it is found to be undesirable, the programmer might add delta 3.15 which excludes it. If the module is accessed at level 3.14, delta 3.14 itself would be applied. If the module is accessed at a level 3.15, though, delta 3.14 would not be applied. From the viewpoint of control, this form of error correction is safer than allowing the programmer to actually delete a delta, since no potentially necessary information is lost." Such advanced thinking from 1975! As for the for the brilliance of the weave, ... [1 - adding to mmastrac's reference of J. Schilling's wonderful SCCS pages] [1]. http://sccs.sourceforge.net/sccs_invention.html http://sccs.sourceforge.net/sccs_invention.html

JNRowe 6y ago
After seeing luckydude answer questions on the little thread the other evening, I'm wondering what other things the SCCS/BK folk think we should be doing better. What have we forgotten? luckydude mentioned real per-file history for example¹, and that pushed me to remember per-file comments as the thing I'd want back. Perhaps someone is listening. ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26207037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26207037
- rbsmith 6y ago
  A reasonable direction to go, and I'll give sort of a non-response. For me, it's to take some time to absorb and celebrate this paper. If I go too quickly to doing better, I tend to miss the amazing. It also makes it easier for me to talk about other's contributions (like luckydude's many) to the state of the art, as then get into what could be better.

tal8d 6y ago

One thing only lightly hinted on is how sccs was designed to tightly couple the source files to the output object files. Imagine super fine grain symbol versioning + loads of metadata for large project management tools. There was also stuff related to version constraints, security, and dynamic dispatching. They had a very different definition of "source control". I still see some odd artifacts of it pop up every so often in AIX object files.