A Repository with 44 Years of Unix Evolution • Hacker News Board

Re: A Repository with 44 Years of Unix Evolution

#21

Post by DSpinellis » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:36 PM UTC

jmclnx wrote: post #10

mprovost wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think either SCCS or RCS tracked merges, so everything looks like a new revision.

Correct. I had used both at work up until around 2005. The idiot large companies I worked at did not believe in Source Code Control. That is the one thing I liked about RCS/SCCS, once I checked out an item, no one could check in their changes unless they contacted me. Forcing a coordinated manual merge between us. I tried to get our org on to something for a while, but got massive push back until 5 or 6 years ago whe…

I convinced a software company to use a version control system (RCS on shared disk) back in 1993. To make it work we had to setup a network — Ethernet over (thin) coaxial cable at the time. This was so new to us that we didn't know we needed to use terminators on the two cable ends.

Re: A Repository with 44 Years of Unix Evolution

#22

Post by leoc » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

whynotmaybe wrote: post #16

keybored wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did source control look like 30 years ago? Was merges used a lot? I have only used Subversion and Git.

Don't know about 30 years ago but 25 years ago in a small shop, the code was on a network share, on the production server. And whenever a code file was locked on the server, the Devs went into the server room (aka the break room with a computer) and rebooted the server. The production server that was used by 30+ employees.

Right: I don't have direct experience, but from what I recall reading it was only over the Subversion era that it really became strikingly abnormal for a professional software team to use no VC software at all. When there was software it could be ... exotic. The FOSS culture's pre-SVN norm of "CVS everywhere" put it notably ahead of others.

Re: A Repository with 44 Years of Unix Evolution

#23

Post by ahartmetz » Sat, Nov 29, 2025, 9:25 AM UTC

DSpinellis wrote: post #12

lionkor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also rebases instead of merges wouldn't count as merges

I don't think the concept of a rebase existed before Bitbucker and Git.

It wasn't called rebasing, but working on a shared branch and updating that branch while having local changes did the same thing.