RCS tutorial (was: Re: "$Id: index.html,v 1.46 2004...)

[Tom Huppi]

On Sat, 2 Oct 2004, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> [redirected to FreeBSD-questions; this is a technical issue]

 <snip>

> You can also check out older versions and compare things; somewhere
> there must be a tutorial.

 <snip>

I've found Dave Plonka's tutorial to be most usefull.  It's all
over the place.  A quick search pulls it up here for instance:

 http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1184/sam9812a/

I'm one of those guys who is paranoid about forgetting how I did
something or what I did to a machine, so I try to use RCS
religiously for sys-admin details.  Note from Plonka's document
that it is a one-liner to see every file that has ever been
tweaked over the life of the machine (assuming one used RCS for
it.)

There are some down-sides and hassles, but I think it's worth
using RCS in many situations, and developing a basic understanding
of how RCS works helps get around these issues.  RCS is a
relatively simple and understandable system.

Thanks,

 - Tom