 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (March 2010) |
| Original author(s) | Marc J. Rochkind |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Bell Labs |
| Initial release | 1973[discuss] |
| Repository | N/A |
| Written in | First version: SNOBOL4 Rewrite: C |
| Operating system | OS/360, Unix, Unix-like |
| Platform | IBM System/370, PDP-11, IA-32 |
| Type | Version control |
| License | proprietary licenses, Common Development and Distribution License |
| Website | The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, 2016 Edition |
Source Code Control System (SCCS) is a version control system designed to track changes in source code and other text files during the development of a piece of software. This allows the user to retrieve any of the previous versions of the original source code and the changes which are stored. It was originally developed at Bell Labs beginning in late 1972 by Marc Rochkind for an IBM System/370 computer running OS/360.[1]
A characteristic feature of SCCS is the sccsid string that is embedded into source code, and automatically updated by SCCS for each revision.[2] This example illustrates its use in the C programming language:
static char sccsid[] = "@(#)ls.c 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/11/93";
This string contains the file name, date, and can also contain a comment. After compilation, the string can be found in binary and object files by looking for the pattern @(#) and can be used to determine which source code files were used during compilation. The what command is available to automate this search for version strings.[3]
- ^ Rochkind, Marc J. (December 1975), "The Source Code Control System" (PDF), IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. SE-1, no. 4, pp. 364–370, doi:10.1109/tse.1975.6312866, S2CID 10006076, archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-05-25, retrieved 2005-07-08
- ^ Oracle. "Chapter 5 SCCS Source Code Control System". Programming Utilities Guide.
- ^ "what". IEEE and The Open Group. n.d. Retrieved November 28, 2022.