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Sourcesafe is a 90-era product. PDP-11 was discontinued long before Sourcesafe was even released. There were version control software around in the 70’s but I

Sourcesafe is a 90-era product. PDP-11 was discontinued long before Sourcesafe was even released. There were version control software around in the 70’s but I do not think that the adoption rate was very high. I think it’s reasonable to assume that they didn’t use it in this case.

eesmith 5y ago
The SCCS paper (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6312866 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6312866 ) says the adoption rate at Bell Labs was high. > The Programmer's Workbench has proven to be very popular with both management and programmers, and is now used by almost all software projects at the author's installation. The followup paper https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800283.811111 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800283.811111 at https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800283.811111 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800283.811111 comments: > SCCS is used extensively within Bell Laboratories. For example, at one installation more than 3 million lines of source code are controlled with sccs. These 3 million lines represent 5000 files and the work of approximately 500 programmers. Additionally, sccs is used at many installations outside the Bell System.
- skissane 5y ago
  > The SCCS paper (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6312866 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6312866 ) says the adoption rate at Bell Labs was high. So, SCCS runs under Unix. The software package we are talking about here is Ericsson JZA715, written mostly in Pascal with a bit of PDP-11 assembler, running under RSX-11M, it was first put into operation in Oslo in 1979. I don't know what development platform Ericsson was using, but I doubt it was Unix, seems far more likely to have been RSX-11. What version control systems would Ericsson have been using on RSX-11 in the 1970s? I doubt it was SCCS – could it have been something else? Anything? RSX-11 has a versioned file system, could they have just used that? Or did people build more advanced version control systems layered on top of that base?
  - eesmith 5y ago
    Quoting the 1975 paper: "There are two implementations of SCCS: one for the IBM 370 under the OS and one for the PDP 11 under UNIX." The original version was for OS/MVT and implemented in SNOBOL4 using the SPITBOL compiler. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA084326.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA084326.pdf says that SNOBOL4 was available for the RSX-11D by 1979. I have no clue what Ericcson was using. My inference from the literature is that apparently when software developers have access to a version control system, they used it, even back in the 1970s. FWIW, I regard versioned file systems as a form of version control.
    - skissane 5y ago
      I wonder if the source code or binaries of the OS/360 version of SCCS are extant.
      - eesmith 5y ago
        I checked archive.org but didn't find any. I assume there are collections of IBM 370 software but don't know where to look. I did come across https://books.google.com/books?id=Gf4YAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA89&dq=%22programmer%27s+workbench%22&hl=en https://books.google.com/books?id=Gf4YAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA89&dq=%2... from 1978 ("Software Designers Workbench", Paul A. Scheffer, Martin Marietta Aerospace > One of the more innovative of recent software engineering activities is the concept of a Programmer's Workbench (PWB) (PWB is the term for the product which included SCCS.) > A simple generalization of the PWB concept results in the idea of a total software engineering facility, i.e., a Designer's Workbench (DWV) ... > Using a PDP 11/70 architecture base, and system software which includes RSX-11M and the UNIX operating systems, standard PWB tools, and INGRES data base capabilities ... Since it looks like UNIX supported the RSX-11M in 1978, why couldn't Ericsson be using Unix on an RSX-11M at the same time in Norway?
        skissane 5y ago
        I asked Marc Rochkind, he doesn't have a copy of the OS/360 SCCS version any more. He said maybe it survives buried deep in some Bell Labs corporate archive, and made reference to the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark

eesmith 5y ago

The SCCS paper (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6312866 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6312866 ) says the adoption rate at Bell Labs was high. > The Programmer's Workbench has proven to be very popular with both management and programmers, and is now used by almost all software projects at the author's installation. The followup paper https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800283.811111 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800283.811111 at https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800283.811111 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800283.811111 comments: > SCCS is used extensively within Bell Laboratories. For example, at one installation more than 3 million lines of source code are controlled with sccs. These 3 million lines represent 5000 files and the work of approximately 500 programmers. Additionally, sccs is used at many installations outside the Bell System.

skissane 5y ago
> The SCCS paper (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6312866 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6312866 ) says the adoption rate at Bell Labs was high. So, SCCS runs under Unix. The software package we are talking about here is Ericsson JZA715, written mostly in Pascal with a bit of PDP-11 assembler, running under RSX-11M, it was first put into operation in Oslo in 1979. I don't know what development platform Ericsson was using, but I doubt it was Unix, seems far more likely to have been RSX-11. What version control systems would Ericsson have been using on RSX-11 in the 1970s? I doubt it was SCCS – could it have been something else? Anything? RSX-11 has a versioned file system, could they have just used that? Or did people build more advanced version control systems layered on top of that base?
- eesmith 5y ago
  Quoting the 1975 paper: "There are two implementations of SCCS: one for the IBM 370 under the OS and one for the PDP 11 under UNIX." The original version was for OS/MVT and implemented in SNOBOL4 using the SPITBOL compiler. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA084326.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA084326.pdf says that SNOBOL4 was available for the RSX-11D by 1979. I have no clue what Ericcson was using. My inference from the literature is that apparently when software developers have access to a version control system, they used it, even back in the 1970s. FWIW, I regard versioned file systems as a form of version control.
  - skissane 5y ago
    I wonder if the source code or binaries of the OS/360 version of SCCS are extant.
    - eesmith 5y ago
      I checked archive.org but didn't find any. I assume there are collections of IBM 370 software but don't know where to look. I did come across https://books.google.com/books?id=Gf4YAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA89&dq=%22programmer%27s+workbench%22&hl=en https://books.google.com/books?id=Gf4YAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA89&dq=%2... from 1978 ("Software Designers Workbench", Paul A. Scheffer, Martin Marietta Aerospace > One of the more innovative of recent software engineering activities is the concept of a Programmer's Workbench (PWB) (PWB is the term for the product which included SCCS.) > A simple generalization of the PWB concept results in the idea of a total software engineering facility, i.e., a Designer's Workbench (DWV) ... > Using a PDP 11/70 architecture base, and system software which includes RSX-11M and the UNIX operating systems, standard PWB tools, and INGRES data base capabilities ... Since it looks like UNIX supported the RSX-11M in 1978, why couldn't Ericsson be using Unix on an RSX-11M at the same time in Norway?
      - skissane 5y ago
        I asked Marc Rochkind, he doesn't have a copy of the OS/360 SCCS version any more. He said maybe it survives buried deep in some Bell Labs corporate archive, and made reference to the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark