Re: SCCS hits you
The problem (or maybe it's a strength) with SCCS is that you have embedded tags that are expanded, normally with dates, versions etc. as the file is checked out readonly. With SCCS, they are surronded by % or some such. (RCS does use similar but incompatible tags, I'm not sure about other systems).
The problem is that in some cases, these tags can mean something to other tools, and may also expect to use % as a special character, in which case deploying an un0checked in copy may cause undesirable effects.
Of course, one solution to this is to use it with "make", which would allow you to perform additional processing around the versioning system. I'm not sure I remember how I did it, but I'm pretty certain when I used make and SCCS in anger, I had a method where I could spot that it was not checked in. Make is slightly aware of SCCS.
But of course, you can't meaningfully compare SCCS with modern tools. I'm sure it wasn't the first versioning system around, but it must have been one of the earliest, dating back to the early 1970's. It was not meant to work with vast software development projects with many people working on them, but for it's time, it did a pretty good job (Bell Labs. used it to develop UNIX).
Each iteration of version control since, like CVS, RCS, arch, Subversion, Git et. al. has expanded on the functionality, meaning that as the grandaddy of them all, SCCS cannot come out favorably in any comparison.
But I still use it on occasion, as it is normally installed on AIX, even when nothing else is.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
