Source Code Control System

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. A characteristic feature of SCCS is the sccsid string that is embedded into source code, and automatically updated by SCCS for each revision. This example illustrates its use in the C programming language: 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. In 1972, Marc Rochkind developed SCCS in SNOBOL4 at Bell Labs for an IBM System/370 computer running OS/360 MVT. He rewrote SCCS in the C programming language for use under UNIX, then running on a PDP-11, in 1973. The first publicly released version was SCCS version 4 from February 18, 1977.