NEWS for GNU RCS (Revision Control System) See the end for copying conditions. - 5.9.0 | 2013-05-06 - distribution now .tar.lz and .tar.xz If you have GNU tar, you can use "tar xf" and it will DTRT. If not, you can use "lzip -dc TARBALL | tar xf -" to unpack the .tar.lz, or "xz -dc TARBALL | tar xf -" for the .tar.xz. - planned retirement - configure option ‘--enable-compat2’ This option enables reading of files written by RCS 2.x (before RCS was GNU, even), but the file format became obsolete in 1982. Support for it WILL BE REMOVED in a near future GNU RCS release. - common option ‘-V’ This option is obsoleted by ‘--version’ (since 5.8, 2011-08-30). Support for it WILL BE REMOVED in some future GNU RCS release. Its use now produces a warning to stderr. Please note that ‘-VN’ (N ∈ {3,4,5}) is a separate issue. - bugs fixed - ‘rcsmerge --help’ mentions ‘-A’, ‘-E’, ‘-e’ These options are accepted and internally passed to diff3(1). - ‘ident -VN’ and ‘merge -VN’ now signal error For these commands, the argument to ‘-V’ has no meaning. Previously, such invocations would display version info, ignoring the arg. Now they signal a "bad option" error. - new features - ident(1) recognizes Subversion "fixed-width keyword syntax" In addition to the normal keyword pattern, for Subversion 1.2 (and later) compatability, ident(1) also recognizes patterns having one of the forms: $KEYWORD:: TEXT $ ;; two colons and space after keyword ;; space before ending $ $KEYWORD:: TEXT#$ ;; two colons and space after keyword ;; hash before ending $ - new co(1) option ‘-S’ for "self-same" mode In this mode, the owner of a lock is unimportant, just that it exists. Effectively, this prevents you from checking out the same revision twice. $ whoami ttn $ co -l -f z RCS/z,v --> z revision 1.1 (locked) done $ co -S -l -f z RCS/z,v --> z co: RCS/z,v: Revision 1.1 is already locked by ttn. - several RCS commands "internalized" into rcs(1) As part of an ongoing effort to modernize the command-line interface of GNU RCS, the previously standalone programs: ci, co, rcs, rcsclean, rcsdiff, rcsmerge, rlog can now be invoked as "rcs PROGRAM". In this case, we call PROGRAM a "command", and also provide some aliases. E.g., you can type "rcs diff" in addition to "rcs rcsdiff" (and "rcsdiff", of course). We plan to support standalone (w/o "rcs" prefix) invocation from the shell at least through the 5.x series of releases -- not indefinitely, but for a good while, yet. The rcs(1) program itself now supports ‘--commands’ to list all the commands, ‘--aliases’ to list their aliases, as well as ‘--help COMAMND’ to show the help for COMMAND. Note that programs ident(1) and merge(1) remain standalone. Lastly, in the manual, section "Invoking rcs" now describes both "modern" and "legacy" usages. Also, the internalized commands invocations mentions both "rcs COMMAND" and "PROGRAM" styles. - ‘--help’ output includes a one-line description E.g., "merge --help" says: "Three-way file merge". - most long options can be recognized if partially specified With the exception of "rcs --help COMMAND", where "--help" must be spelled out in full, all long options can now be recognized even if partially specified. For example, "rcs --al" is recognized as "rcs --aliases". - updated portability Several more Gnulib (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib) modules are now in use. - new cross-compilation support The configure script now assigns "pessimistic defaults" when cross-compiling. See new section "cross-compilation" in README. - effects of ‘-VN’ (N ∈ {3,4,5}) documented See (info "(rcs) Misc common options"). - maintenance tools updated - gnulib-tool (GNU gnulib 2013-05-01 06:14:19) 0.0.7913-5191 - 5.8.2 | 2013-04-04 - Bugs fixed - Wrong symbolic name dereference RCS 5.8 introduced a bug whereby commands would incorrectly dereference a symbolic name (into a numerical revision number) in the presence of multiple symbolic names that share a common prefix. See tests/t803. - ‘integrity’ value syntax better specified The ‘integrity’ value (if present) is a string composed of a system part followed by an optional user part, with formfeed (^L, U+0C) separating the two. Unlike other string values, the ‘integrity’ string (either part) must NOT contain '@' (U+40). If it does, RCS displays a "spurious '@' in `integrity' value" error message and exits failurefully. This change restores interop play-space for third-party tools that was stricken w/ the RCS 5.8 top-level grammar freeze. Left unspecified is how such tools should divvy up the user part. - New manual chapter: RCS file format This documents the RCS file format grammar and particulars, adapted from rcsfile(5). - Manpages refer to info documentation They now recommend using "info rcs" for full documentation. - Script to trim "junk at end of file" posted The "junk at end of file" error occurs for some files due to RCS 5.8 being more strict about the syntax it accepts. You can use ‘trimrcs’ by Warren Jones: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-rcs/2013-01/msg00006.html to remedy such files while we figure out how best to move such functionality into RCS proper. - Maintenance tools updated - automake (GNU Automake) 1.13.1 - gnulib-tool (GNU gnulib 2013-03-19 16:08:47) 0.0.7899-34f84 - makeinfo (GNU Texinfo) 5.1 - 5.8.1 | 2012-06-05 - Bugs fixed - Debug output removed Due to an oversight, release 5.8 rlog included code to write debugging output to stderr for invocations using the ‘-d’ option and a date range (e.g., ‘rlog -d 2010<2012’). - Criteria for avoiding read-only checks refined For "make check", some test cases are inhibited if the user running the test is not effectively blocked from writing a purportedly read-only file, such as when "make check" is run by the super user, or for certain (weird) NFS situations. Previously, to determine this condition, we considered only the operating system type, a very crude (and incomplete) proxy. Now, we explicitly check with a shell sequence comprising the umask(1) and test(1) commands, plus output-redirection. - Regression in ‘-zLT’ handling On a 64-bit x86 system, RCS 5.8 introduced a regression whereby: rlog -zLT -d>2011-05-04 would select the correct entry but display its date always with default (01) month and day, i.e., YYYY-01-01. This is now fixed (see also tests/t320). - Regression in ‘ci -d -T’ handling RCS 5.8 introduced a regression whereby: ci -l -d -T FILE would set the mtime of RCS/FILE,v (the comma-v file) to the epoch. This is now fixed (see also tests/t810). - Use ‘diff --label’ instead of ‘diff -L’ Previously, RCS used GNU diff's ‘-L’ option. According to Paul Eggert (a GNU diffutils maintainer): That option has been undocumented since diffutils 2.8 (released in March 2002) and the option is intended to be replaced sometime soon with a different meaning. Now, RCS uses ‘diff --label’, thus immune to the planned change. - Miscellaneous changes - Make help extraction noisy (on failure) - Silence some compiler warnings - Increase coverage of "make check" - Documentation improvements - Manpage rcsintro(1) dropped This manpage is redundant, and (arguably) should not have been in section 1 in the first place. - Use "Invoking COMMAND" instead of "COMMAND" as node names This makes it easier for ‘info --usage COMMAND’ to DTRT, and makes GNU (info "(standards) Manual Structure Details") happy. - explicitly UTF-8 This is to prepare for a (future) GNU Texinfo release that renders @code in a more pretty way when the encoding is UTF-8. If you're reading this (from the future) with such a Texinfo at hand, feel free to regenerate the docs in doc/ prior to install. - CVS is not GNU Previously, we incorrectly said "GNU CVS", succumbing to a common misunderstanding. Now we know better. - TAGS file no longer distributed To create, configure normally and do "make TAGS". - New configure script option ‘--enable-coverage’ Specifying ‘--enable-coverage’ causes ‘_Exit’ to be an alias for ‘exit’ and CFLAGS to append ‘--coverage’ if the compiler is GCC. This is needed because the coverage machinery writes the .gcda files only on ‘exit’. This option is for maintainers; most people can ignore it. - Portability improvements - Use more gnulib modules - Use portable Makefile subst-ref variable syntax - Use portable shell command-output interpolation syntax - Maintenance tools upgraded - GNU Automake 1.12 - GNU Autoconf 2.69 - gnulib-tool (GNU gnulib 2012-06-03 16:29:00) 0.0.7432-f6c24-modified - 5.8 | 2011-08-30 - License now GPLv3+ (see COPYING) - Change in terminology: from "path" to "file name" (or "file-name") However, if "path" intends "search path", we say so explicitly. - Changes to the RCS package - New documentation in Info format On "make install", rcs.info is installed in $(infodir), with title "GNU RCS " in dircategory "Version control". The doc source is texinfo (released under GNU FDL 1.3), so you can easily create output in HTML, PDF, etc. - Dropped configure option: --with-diffutils To specify non-GNU diffutils programs diff(1) and diff3(1), name them using variables on the configure command-line. See README. - Configuration more strict in some ways, more lax in others. Before, part of the configuration was done at compile time. Now, all of it is done by the configure script. Here are the set of conditions which will cause the configure script to fail (with a "could not find..." message): - for --enable-mailer=PROG, ‘PROG’ not absolute; - for diff(1), value of env var ‘DIFF’ not absolute; - diff(1) not GNU diffutils compatible; - for diff3(1), value of env var ‘DIFF3’ not absolute; - for ed(1), value of env var ‘ED’ not absolute; - no C99-capable compiler. Here, "absolute" means "specified as an absolute filename". On the flip side, configuration no longer checks for some situations such as ‘sigaction’ yes, but ‘SA_SIGINFO’ no. Most of the portability duties are now handled by gnulib. - New configure option: --enable-suid[=setreuid] This builds RCS with setuid support (the default). Optional arg ‘setreuid’ means use setreuid(2) instead of seteuid(2). - New configure option: --disable-mmap This builds RCS without mmap(2), even if available. See README. - New configure option: --enable-mailer=PROG The feature whereby ci(1) sends mail when breaking a lock is now disabled by default. To enable, specify ‘--enable-mailer=PROG’ to the configure script. See README. - New configure option: --enable-compat2 This preponderantly unlikely to be used option allows RCS commands to read RCS files written by RCS 2. See README. - You can "make check" prior to "make install". Doing "make check" automatically prepends to the ‘PATH’ env var the value of ‘$(abs_top_builddir)/src’, so that the programs co, rcsdiff, and rcsmerge can find their peers (co and merge). Likewise, "make installcheck" prepends ‘$(DESTDIR)$(bindir)’. Previously, you had to "make install" first and then arrange for ‘$(DESTDIR)$(bindir)’ to be on ‘PATH’ "manually". See tests/README for more info on the test suite. - Bug fixes - Remove all edit info when removing all revisions. Previously, "rcs -o" (outdating) all revisions failed to leave the RCS file in a consistent state; edit info (i.e., log message + diff(1) output) remained for the deleted revisions. For example, this sequence of commands: echo foo > foo ci -q -i -t-desc -mHELLO foo rcs -q -o1.1: foo grep '@H' foo,v used to display "@HELLO" to stdout. Now, all revisions are completely removed. - Code no longer uses mktemp(3). Using mktemp(3) is a security risk. We use mkstemp(3) now. Likewise, rcsfreeze.sh now uses mktemp(1). - Misc manpage tweaks / fixes. Document ‘rlog -q’; fix small merge.1 omission; add branch labels in rcsfile.5; say "GNU RCS " in footer. - Other changes - All commands accept ‘--help’ and ‘--version’. The help output includes an email address for bug reports. For continuity, option ‘-V’ is now a synonym for ‘--version’. Relatedly, commands no longer display usage info if given a bad or malformed option. You can use ‘--help’ for that. - A string of all digits is now valid for author, state. This means you can set the author or state to, for example, "000000" or "42". Previously, these would have caused a "invalid identifier" or "invalid symbol" error. - Env var RCS_MEM_LIMIT controls stdio threshold. For speed, RCS uses memory-based routines for files up to 256 kilobytes, and stream-based (stdio) routines otherwise. You can change this threshold value by setting the environment variable ‘RCS_MEM_LIMIT’ to a non-negative integer, measured in kilobytes. An empty ‘RCS_MEM_LIMIT’ value is silently ignored. - RCS can now work with files larger than 2 gigabytes. RCS now uses large file offsets (#define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64). - Pass-through for RCS file ‘commitid SYMBOL’ now builtin. Due to GNU CVS (Concurrent Versions System) using a compatible file format as RCS for the RCS file, you can use RCS commands to view and manipulate its contents. (Note, however, the next NEWS item.) This works well enough except for a small annoyance: CVS adds a per-revision field called the "commitid" with an opaque (to RCS) symbolic value. Previously, RCS commands would emit a warning "unrecognized phrases" (unless given ‘-q’ on the command-line). RCS commands now automatically support pass-through handling of ‘commitid SYMBOL’ (so ‘-q’ is no longer necessary). - RCS file top-level grammar frozen. The RCS file top-level grammar is now frozen; RCS no longer supports pass-through operation of unrecognized key/data pairs (called "newphrases" in the RCS 5.7 rcsfile(5) manpage). To avoid painting ourselves into a corner, the grammar now includes a new key ‘integrity’ with @-string value, whose sub-grammar is not yet specified. (We intend to keep checksums and other compacted redundancies in this field, for manipulation by the commands in a future RCS 5.x release.) For upward compatability, the commands in this release do not change this field, although they silently read and write it (pass-through), if present. - RCS file syntax-validated earlier, completely. Previously, RCS file syntax was validated lazily, and trailing garbage was not detected (see bugfix above). Now, a top-level validation is done on each access. - Possible to specify an empty log message with ci -m, rcs -m. The commands "ci -m" and "rcs -m" no longer error on an empty log message. Their non-interactive behavior is now consistent with the interactive invocation. was: ci -m file < /dev/null # use stdin to avoid error now: ci -m file # works fine, like so Note that these commands actually store as the log message the string: "*** empty log message ***". - Date option accepts some more date-only formats Date format ‘YYYY-DDD’ specifies a year and a day (1-366), while format ‘YYYY-wWW-D’ specifies a year, an ISO week number (0-53, 0 is a GNU RCS extension), and a day number (1-7, for Monday through Sunday). - Changes to rcsdiff - New handling for option: -U N This arranges to output N lines of unified-diff context. Relatedly, the list of possible options passed to the underlying diff(1) appears in both "rcsdiff --help" and in the manual. - Refined "same-revision don't call diff" optimization Normally, if the two revisions specified are the same, we avoid calling the underlying diff(1) on the theory that it will produce no output. This does not hold generally for ‘-y’ (--side-by-side) and ‘-D’ (--ifdef), such as when the revision specified is by different symbolic names, so for those options the optimization is disabled. - 5.7 | 1995-06-16 Here is a brief summary of user-visible changes since 5.6. New options: ‘-kb’ supports binary files. ‘-T’ preserves the modification time of RCS files. ‘-V’ prints the version number. ‘-zLT’ causes RCS to use local time in working files and logs. ‘rcsclean -n’ outputs what rcsclean would do, without actually doing it. ‘rlog -N’ omits symbolic names. There is a new keyword ‘Name’. Inserted log lines now have the same prefix as the preceding ‘$Log’ line. Most changes for RCS version 5.7 are to fix bugs and improve portability. RCS now conforms to GNU configuration standards and to Posix 1003.1b-1993. Features new to RCS version 5.7, and possibly incompatible in minor ways with previous practice, include: - Inserted log lines now have the same prefix as the preceding ‘$Log’ line. E.g. if a $Log line starts with ‘// $Log’, log lines are prefixed with ‘// ’. RCS still records the (now obsolescent) comment leader inside RCS files, but it ignores the comment leader unless it is emulating older RCS versions. If you plan to access a file with both old and new versions of RCS, make sure its comment leader matches its ‘$Log’ line prefix. For backwards compatibility with older versions of RCS, if the log prefix is ‘/*’ or ‘(*’ surrounded by optional white space, inserted log lines contain ‘ *’ instead of ‘/*’ or ‘(*’; however, this usage is obsolescent and should not be relied on. - $Log string ‘Revision’ times now use the same format as other times. - Log lines are now inserted even if -kk is specified; this simplifies merging. - ci's -rR option (with a nonempty R) now just specifies a revision number R. In some beta versions, it also reestablished the default behavior of releasing a lock and removing the working file. Now, only the bare -r option does this. - With an empty extension, any appearance of a directory named ‘RCS’ in a pathname identifies the pathname as being that of an RCS file. For example, ‘a/RCS/b/c’ is now an RCS file with an empty extension. Formerly, ‘RCS’ had to be the last directory in the pathname. - rlog's -d option by default now uses exclusive time ranges. E.g. ‘rlog -d"