Source Code Control

[Peter Hamer]

In article <133 at tirnan.UUCP> john at tirnan.UUCP (John Richartz) writes:
>
>    I've worked with several (mostly ad-hoc) variants of
>    development based on either SCCS or RCS and find that the structure
>    is generally not in place to provide a development model that
>    allows for realistic development of a Product and any variants and
>    descendents of it ...
>
>    "Source Control" is only a part of the problem ...

I know the problem well! A configuration management system called Shape
has just been distributed on comp.sources.unix. You will probably find
the papers included in the distribution well worth the effort of unpacking
all 33 parts; they are very interesting.

Shape is in some ways yet another SCCS/RCS combined with yet another Make.
However, it is built on an 'Attribute FileSystem' which maintains a
distinction between objects and their attributes. This enables Make requests
of the form 'select the newest version of all components I am working on and
the newest published version of all other components' to be used. Similarly,
some of the problems of variants seem to be addressed; both when the variants
are realised as separate sources, and when they are realised as a common source
with different compiler-time flags.

I would be interested in other peoples comments on the approach adopted by
the Shape team, and any feedback from people using it [or trying to use it].

Please read the Shape papers and don't rely on the accuracy of my summary.