Most version control systems today are multi-user, multi-file, and multi-fork oriented. These are all good features and properties to have, but they neglect the need to maintain simple single-file documents, such as HOWTOs and FAQs, much like the very file you are reading now. There is even a good use-case for small programs and scripts. Do you presently keep your ~/bin contents under version control? If not, consider using SRC for them.

It is true, other VCSes already fulfill this simple criterion, SCCS and RCS being some of the earliest examples dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. While SCCS died off due to its proprietary nature, RCS has kept a niche for itself precisely for single-file projects. In fact, SRC is built on top of RCS, rather than reimplementing all of the gritty master file details.

The idea that spawned the development of SRC was that it would
have five properties characterizing it:

Notably, RCS itself fails on the latter two criteria. Designed both as an early attempt at VCS and for multi-user environments, the commands are awkward to deal with and it even requires complicated processes of locking and unlocking files in order to edit and commit them. None of this is appropriate anymore. Modern DVCSes with a non-locking model have proven more effective for multi-user projects and wide coordination.

Other projects to mold Mercurial and Git for a single-file purpose at the very least will fail criteria #3 and #5, and often #4 as well.

Absolutely not! SRC and DVCSes serve entirely opposite needs. SRC’s strength is precisely when there is no need nor desire for collaboration or publishing features, when there is only a single file and a single author for a file. In fact, if your script grows into a full project in its own right, SRC has a src fast-export command that can be used to jump-start a DVCS repository with the entire existing history intact.

SRC might make certain uses of DVCS obsolete. Such as keeping individual documents tucked away in their own directories so that the DVCS can operate (which usually have a special repository directed named like .hg or .git). Scripts to impose a single-file concept on top of these systems do not go far enough with respect to the reasons SRC exists.

YES! SRC is explicitly designed to have the bare-bones features and commands of a modern version control system. Keep in mind that SRC’s strength is single-file documents and projects. If you have loose scripts and documents not presently under any version control, SRC is a good candidate for playing around with them.

If instead you have a large multi-file project, ease yourself into using a DVCS with simple commands, possibly even using SRC’s command set as a guideline for which ones to learn first. You will appreciate having actual changesets that span multiple files in this use case. Mercurial and Git are the most common, which means they are also easy to find help for.

No. When SRC commits a file with RCS on the backend, it uses -kb which explicitly disables all kind of expansion, and also allows arbitrary binary files to be stored. Keyword expansion has, in general, not been well-accepted in the VCS world and most modern VCSes do not support it at all. Do not even suggest this feature, it will not be implemented.

If you don’t see it in the “src help” listing, probably not. You are certainly free to suggest features, but SRC is developed with extreme conservatism as to what features to implement or not. Remember, single-file, single-user, private VCS.

Before requesting a feature, ask yourself whether it makes SRC more complicated, whether it really helps a single author or developer, and whether it really makes sense to deploy SRC for your use-case instead of a DVCS. These can all be hard questions, and if you are in doubt, you may go forth with your request, others may share their own opinions.

SRC shines in its simplicity. Extra features is not against this, but too many can easily creep over into “too complicated” territory.

The answer is either “completely fine” or “not at all”, depending on what is being asked. :-)

SRC makes no special provisions, it operates in the current working directory whether that is local storage, NFS, CIFS, sshfs, or any other kind of networking file system. As long as the directory tree is mounted on your system, SRC should be able to handle it.

Consistency with other version control systems is an important way to reduce any kind of surprises while using SRC. Unfortunately, the single-letter codes used for statuses are not identical between VCSes and often conflict with each other over specific meanings. For example, D means deleted in Subversion and Git, but Mercurial uses R for that same meaning. Git uses R to mean renamed, while Subversion uses it to mean replaced.

It is an unfortunate state of affairs. The development philosophy behind SRC is to keep it as un-innovative and unsurprising as possible, but since multiple VCSes in widespread use have not converged on the same meanings for single-letter status codes, SRC needs to settle on its own definitions that may differ from what you are used to.

No, though the author admits he did laugh a lot while roughing out the original design. Resurrect RCS? Wrap it in a decent UI? Really?

There’s a significant amount of ha-ha-only-serious here. Laugh, but treat SRC as a lesson in several things. Unix minimalism. The virtue of re-use, even of technology as old as RCS. The value of a carefully designed UI. The value of a conservative design with no surprises and no undue cleverness.

What will be funny is when we implement the back end to talk to SCCS. It won’t be difficult, that whole end of the interface is encapsulated in a class…

Nearly all of this FAQ, except “This is a joke, right?”, was written by Mike Swanson, aka chungy.