Re: Year 2000 - an alternative headache

Jonathan Leffler wrote: > > Hi, > > If you don't use SCCS, you don't need to read any further. > > The existing SCCS file format uses a 2-digit year field. Funnily > enough, this does not work well once we reach the year 2000. I tested > this on my Sun Sparc running Solaris 2.5.1 by setting the date to 2002. > If you manage to get a file into SCCS, it comes out with corrupted > information, and fetching an old file was not reliable either. > > Sun is going to be releasing patches for SCCS on Solaris later this year > (see their Year 2000 pages at http://www.sun.com). I have not been able > to determine whether their change will be the same as anybody else's > change to handle the year 2000. It is not clear, therefore, whether > SCCS files will continue to be portable to all different machines after > the year 2000. > > Consequently, and much to my chagrin, I've converted from SCCS to RCS, > which uses 4-digit dates. I still don't like a number of features of > RCS, but having the source code control programs work after the year > 2000 offsets the other problems. It is also inherently portable. > Traditionally, SCCS files have been too, but it isn't clear whether all > the vendors will use the same fix for SCCS, so I'm not taking any > chances. > > I do have a comprehensive version of sccs2rcs which I'll post if people > are interested. It is Bourne/Korn shell script (the original was C > Shell), and its what I used to do all my conversions. The only item I'm > not happy with is the way it handles (or, rather, doesn't handle) > branch versions such as 1.10.1.3. > > I only had one file affected by this, so I ducked and finished that file > manually. > > Yours, > Jonathan Leffler (johnl@informix.com) #include <disclaimer.h> Jonathan and group, I have a conversion program too, for SCCS-to-RCS, however I can't say it's better than your newer sccs2rcs. The last time I looked at sccs2rcs it was woefully inadequate, and scary. I couldn't tell what it was up to. So, I wrote my own, and I believe it goes three-deep: 1.1.2.1.3.1 1 2 3 It could probably go deeper, with a minimum amount of modification. I haven't diddled with it in over a year, but my tools work %100 and it's been proven to work on rather large distributions. The docs may not be enough, but I can help whoever is interested. I had no idea SCCS wasn't year-2000 compliant. Interesting. Well, anyway, I make mention of my tools not as a competition, but merely as an alternative, to help. Like I say, I'm not sure if it's better that what you have Jonathan, but I know it works quite well. Head to the "Master Listing" at my site and help yourself... And yes, I'd be interested in a copy of your program... :-) Tim -- Tim Schaefer \\\\|// tschaefe@mindspring.com (6 6) ------------------------oOOo---( )---o00o--------- http://www.inxutil.com