2. Which One Is for Me? CVS or RCS

CVS actually uses RCS underneath. CVS is a lot more powerful tool and can control a complete source code tree. It is very strongly recommended that you use CVS, because you can greatly customize CVS with scripting languages like PERL, Korn and bash shells. See the sample korn shell scripts at Shell Scripts .

Advantages of CVS:

• CVS is decentralised so a user checks out files/directories from the repostitory and have his own separate stable source directory tree.
• CVS can "STAMP" releases of an entire project source tree.
• CVS can enable concurrent editing of files.
• CVS can be greatly customized to enable strong locking of files via shell scripts or PERL scripts. CVS supports weak locking with the command 'cvs watches' and also no locking permitting concurrent editing of files.

Disadvantages of CVS:

• Needs a little more administration than RCS.
• Very highly sophisticated and complex system. It is "State of the Art" technology. The cvs software is a very advanced and capable system developed over a very long period of time (it took several years!!). It tooks about 20 to 30 years of research to develop CVS and it is still evolving!!
• Has a large number of commands and command options, hence a steeper learning curve for beginners. The shell scripts at Shell Scripts can ease usage.

Advantages of RCS:

• RCS is very simple to setup, with less administrative work.
• RCS is used in a centralized area where everyone works.
• RCS is useful for simple systems.
• Very strong locking of files - concurrency eliminated.

Downside of RCS:

• Concurrent development by multiple developers is not possible due to file locking and being limited to a single working directory. Because of the single working directory limitation, changes to files by multiple developers can cause failure of the 'make' command.
• Cannot stamp releases of an entire software project.

This document also has shell scripts which provide simple commands to check-out, check-in, and commit files. See shell scripts at Shell Scripts

For RCS see the RCS mini-howto on the Linux cdrom:

cd /mnt/cdrom/Redhat/RPMS
ls -l howto-6.0-*.noarch.rpm
rpm -qpl howto-6* | grep -i rcs 

See also the RCS shell scripts at rcs_scripts