Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Name

rcs

Synopsis

rcs [options]files

An administrative command for setting up or changing the default attributes of RCS files. rcs requires you to supply at least one option. (This is for “future expansion.”)

Among other things, rcs lets you set strict locking (-L), delete revisions (-o), and override locks set by co (-l and -u). RCS files have an access list (created via -a); anyone whose username is on the list can run rcs. The access list is often empty, meaning that rcs is available to everyone. In addition, you can always invoke rcs if you own the file, if you’re a privileged user, or if you run rcs with -i. rcs accepts the standard options -q, -V, -V n, -T, -x, and -z.

Options

-a users

Append the comma-separated list of users to the access list.

-A otherfile

Append otherfile’s access list to the access lists of files.

-b[ R ]

Set the default branch to R or, if R is omitted, to the highest branch on the trunk.

-c ' s '

The comment leader for $Log$ keyword is set to string s. You could, for example, set s to .\" for troff files or set s to * for C programs. (You would need to manually insert an enclosing /* and */ before and after $Log$.)

-c is obsolescent; RCS uses the character(s) preceding $Log$ in the file as the comment leader for log messages. You may wish to set this, though, if you are accessing the RCS file with older versions of RCS.

-e[ users ]

Erase everyone (or only the specified users) from the access list.

-i

Create (initialize) an RCS file, but don’t deposit a revision. ...