SCCS vs RCS

[Leo de Wit]

In article <1874 at istop.ist.CO.UK> dmg at ist.CO.UK (Dave McGlade) writes:
|Both RCS and SCCS have two major shortcomings, in my humble opinion (what? !!)
|Firstly, both require write access to the file containing old versions, 
|(perhaps under some other user id).

No, they need write access (by the effective user) to the directory
containing the version file. The version file only has (some of) the
read mode bits on.

|This means that, potentially, I can corrupt old versions. 
|From a project point of view, this is *BAD* news.

Just install the sccs frontend as setuid sccs (this is the default e.g.
on Ultrix). Your system manager can chown sccs an SCCS directory for
you (question: shouldn't this be an sccs command instead?); now you can
get to the files only through the sccs frontend. You can go even further
and create an access list for each RCS/SCCS file.

|                                                  Once
|filed away as 'write only' an old version should not be corruptable without
|forcing your resident guru to get out his code to access the disk as a
|raw device :->

If you file away old versions as 'write only', you shouldn't worry
about them getting corrupted: you can't read them anyway 8-).

    Leo.