Wanted: pattern-based source-code control

[Minor Seventh]

I need a source code control system that inserts diff's in locations
in code based on pattern recognition, not line numbers. I need the
system to record a set of changes and then be able to re-perform those
changes on subsequent versions of software, in which line numbers
will be thrown off. My only SCCS experience is with RCS and diff's in
RCS are line-no based Unix diff's.

Any suggestions for a source control tool would be appreciated.

[James D. Veale]

You may want to look at the sibling software merge utilities
of the Complite File Comparison Family. The 'Sib' utilities include
SibDeux for OS/2, SibSerf for Windows (NT), and CompSib for DOS.

These utilities are used when you are maintaining two different
but related sets of source code, and you wish to apply improvements
from one set to another, such as...

1. Vendor Supplied Source - You've purchased software and
source code from a large vendor, and have made changes
to the source code. Now the vendor comes out with
a new version of their software. SibSerf lets you apply
the changes in the new version of the vendor software while
maintaining your local modifications.

2. Cloned Application - You began by cloning, or copying,
a working application as the basis for a related application.
Sometime later you wish to apply changes in the original
application to the clone.

3. Back Level Maintenance - You are supporting several different
revisions of software. In rev4 you make a series of
emergency fixes to rev3. Now you have to applythese fixes
all the way back to rev 0. SibSerf lets you view, and merge,
the changes from rev3 to rev4 as they apply to rev0,
while suppressing the changes made in rev1, 2, and 3.

Descriptions and demonstration versions are on my web page.

http://world.std.com/~jdveale/index.html

Jim Veale
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[Jorgen Grahn]

On 2 Nov 2001 16:11:00 -0800, Minor Seventh <mino...@netscape.net> wrote:
> I need a source code control system that inserts diff's in locations
> in code based on pattern recognition, not line numbers. I need the
> system to record a set of changes and then be able to re-perform those
> changes on subsequent versions of software, in which line numbers
> will be thrown off. My only SCCS experience is with RCS and diff's in

I don't understand the question fully, but Larry Wall's patch (AKA GNU patch)
can patch a file or file tree based on the diff between two earlier versions.
(There's no guarantee that the result is what you intended, of course.)

--
// Jorgen Grahn <jgrahn@ ''Battle ye not with monsters,
\X/ algonet.se> lest ye become a monster''

[my-las...@mediaone.net]

A versioning system based on change-sets and composite versioning will do this.

There were three commercial offerings that support composite versioning:

1) Content Integrity, which is in Chapter 7 and whose product is for sale as
part of bankruptcy court proceedings (Case # 01-13115-JNF, Boston)

2) A vendor I despise and won't mention by name.

3) I've heard that the BitKeeper product (by BitMover, or vice versa) has
limited support for composite versioning.

4) I'm told that SCCS has some capability to do composite versioning (but not
change-sets), but it's not geared to do this by default.