RCS DEBATE

[birkholz@midnight.com (Matt Birkholz)]

   Date: Sat, 26 Mar 94 21:14 PST
   From: stephen.white@adam.com.au

   [The following is written by Chris Adlard, the software configuration and
    quality manager for two of the largest software projects in Australia.  ]

     Having read the discussion for several days now, I would like to add my
   comments.

    IJ> Remy Card's championing of RCS to solve the world's problems have
    IJ> been clearly shown to be a red herring by David Engel.

     I put it to you that no such thing has been done. The following is what
   David Engel said.

   [...]
     David Engel is right, however Remy Card was correcting you on a
   completely different issue. The following is the original material to
   which he was responding.

A completely different issue would be a red herring.

    IJ> This scheme solves a serious problem, namely that directories for
    IJ> group projects are quite simply unmanageable without it.
    IJ> 
    IJ> I have often been in the position of having to do cp -r on large
    IJ> directory trees because I couldn't update the appropriate portions.
    IJ> Numerous times I have had to 'make clean' before I could 'make',
    IJ> because some of the '.o' files were unreadable and some were
    IJ> unwriteable.

     As is now obvious, you were making a clear and specific reference to
   code. David Engel in no way has shown Remy's debunking of the above to be
   a "red herring".

It's obvious, huh?  Where did Remy debunk the fact that, under the
traditional arrangement, .o files are often (by default) inappropriately
write protected?  Where did Remy debunk the fact that there exist other
types of files, revisions of which cannot be controlled by RCS
(e.g. database files)?  Where did Remy debunk the fact that it would be
more convenient not to have to _fix_ the permissions of RCS directories
created in a project directory tree?  These are the problems which the
proposed private group proposal was intended to address.  What does RCS
have to do with these problems?

     Remy Card is quite correct when he says that a revision control system
   must be used on any software project. I fully endorse his comments. Ian 
   Jackson's suggestion of using groups for project work is not a viable 
   proposition.

I fully endorse Remy's comments that a revision control system should be
used when possible.  Ian's suggestion was NOT, I repeat, NOT to replace
RCS.  Controlling revisions to source files is a different issue.  (The red
herring wins again.)

   [...]

Thanks for the tutorial on revision control (not).

   Summarising; even a very small project should use revision control, with
   CM activites scaled down accordingly to suit.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Is someone disagreeing with you?

Can we put this red herring to bed, please?

Matthew Birkholz
birkholz@martigny.ai.mit.edu