RCS - Revision Control System

Synopsis

The Revision Control System (RCS) is a set of tools for managing multiple revisions of a single file.

RCS can run on any *nix system, and even Windows (using Cygwin).

Using RCS

The first thing you should do is create a sub-directory called RCS, all the version information will be stored in it. Once this is done, you can use the following commands to check files in and out etc. ...

ci : check in a file ci -u filename (this moves the file into a filename,v file; the -u flag tells RCS to leave a non-writeable copy of the working file where the working file used to be).

co : check out a file co -l filename (the -l locks the file, to make it only editable by you)

rcsdiff : show changes since the previous revision rcsdiff filename

rlog : view revision log rlog filename

Beyond RCS

There's CVS, which is good for managing entire projects. I considered writing a document for it but although I have to use CVS at work, I find that I much prefer git - it does everything that CVS does and more, is easier to setup and (I find) easier to use and share your repositories.