RCS-CHECKIN(1)

💖 NAME 💖

okay so rcs-checkin — she takes literally any number of file arguments and checks them into RCS. that's it, that's the job bestie 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

rcs-checkin files ...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so this manual page is a lil quick intro to the rcs-checkin command, nothing too deep. it was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program straight up doesn't have a manual page 😭 instead it has documentation in the GNU Info format — see below, iykyk.

everything from here down is taken from the script itself, no cap.

args that are detectably either RCS masters (names ending in ,v) or Emacs version files (names shaped like foo.~<number>~) get ignored. for each file foo, the script goes looking for Emacs version files related to it. those files get checked in as deltas, oldest first, so that the contents of the file itself ends up being the latest revision in the master. slay 💅

the first line of each file is used as its description text. the file itself is not deleted — same energy as under VC with vc-keep-workfiles sitting at its default of t — but all the version files absolutely do get deleted. periodt.

if an argument file is already version-controlled under RCS, then any version files get added to the list of deltas and deleted, and after that the workfile gets checked in again as the latest version. ngl this is probably not quite what was wanted, and it's the main reason VC doesn't simply call this to do checkins. 🙈

this script's whole purpose is converting files that have an old-Emacs-style version history so they can be used with VC (the Emacs 19 version-control interface), which is lowkey obsessed with using RCS as its back end. it was written by Paul Eggert and revised/documented for use with VC by Eric S. Raymond, Mar 19 1993. iconic collab fr fr 🔥

👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by James LewisMoss <dres@debian.org> for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others, she's generous like that 🫶). most of the text was written by the rcs-checkin authors themselves, Paul Eggert and Eric S. Raymond. the way they all came together on this... 💖

RCS-CHECKIN(1) — from the General Commands Manual, besties 💅 that's the whole vibe check, mwah, bye! 🌸✨🎀