Making Inquiries

The following subcommands are useful for inquiring about the status of a file or its history.

Seeing Which Version Has Been Retrieved: The what Command

Since SCCS allows you (or others) to retrieve any version in the file history, there is no guarantee that a working copy present in the directory reflects the version you want. The what command scans files for SCCS ID keywords. It also scans binary files for keywords, allowing you to see from which source versions a program was compiled.

$ what program.c program 
program.c:
      program.c 1.1 88/07/05 SMI; 
program: 
     	program.c 1.1 88/07/05 SMI;

In this case, the file contains a working copy of version 1.1.

Determining the Most Recent Version: sccs get -g

To see the SID of the latest delta, you can use sccs get -g:

$ sccs get -g program.c
1.2

In this case, the most recent delta is 1.2. Since this is more recent than the version reflected by what in the example above, you would probably want to use get for the new version.

Determining Who Has a File Checked Out: sccs info

To find out what files are being edited, type:

sccs info

This subcommand displays a list of all the files being edited, along with other information, such as the name of the user who checked out the file. Similarly, you can use

sccs check

which silently returns a non-zero exit status if anything is being edited. This can be used within a makefile to force make(1S) to halt if it should find that a source file is checked out.

If you know that all the files you have checked out are ready to be checked in, you can use the following to process them all:

sccs delta 'sccs tell -u'

tell lists only the names of files being edited, one per line. With the -u option, tell reports only those files checked out to you. If you supply a username as an argument to -u, sccs tell reports only the files checked out to that user.

Displaying Delta Comments: sccs prt

sccs prt produces a listing of the version log, also referred to as the delta table, which includes the SID, time and date of creation, and the name of the user who checked in each version, along with the number of lines inserted, deleted, and unchanged, and the commentary:

$ sccs prt program.c
D 1.2		80/08/29 12:35:31						pers		2	1	00005/00003/00084 
corrected typo in widget(), 
null pointer in n_crunch()

D 1.1		79/02/05 00:19:31						zeno		1	0	00087/00000/00000 
date and time created 80/06/10 00:19:31 by zeno

To display only the most recent entry, use the -y option.

Updating a Delta Comment: sccs cdc

If you forget to include something important in a comment, you can add the missing information using:

sccs cdc -r sid

The delta must be the most recent (or the most recent in its branch, see "Branches "). Also, you must either be the user who checked the delta in, or you must own and have permission to write on both the history file and the SCCS subdirectory. When you use cdc, SCCS prompts for your comments and inserts the new comment you supply:

$ sccs cdc -r1.2 program.c
comments? also taught get_in() to handle control chars

The new commentary, as displayed by prt, looks like this:

$ sccs prt program.c
D 1.2		80/08/29 12:35:31							pers		2	1	00005/00003/00084
also taught get_in() to handle control chars 
*** CHANGED *** 88/08/02 14:54:45 pers
corrected typo in widget(),
null pointer in n_crunch()

D 1.1		79/02/05 00:19:31 						zeno		1	0	00087/00000/00000 
date and time created 80/06/10 00:19:31 by zeno 

Comparing Checked-In Versions: sccs sccsdiff

To compare two checked-in versions, use the following to see the differences between delta 1.1 and delta 1.2.

$ sccs sccsdiff -r1.1 -r1.2 program.c

Displaying the Entire History: sccs get -m -p

If you want to see a listing of all changes made to the file and the delta in which each was made, you can use the -m and -p options to get:

$ sccs get -m -p program.c
1.2 
1.2 #define L_LEN 256 
1.1
1.1 #include <stdio.h>
1.1
.  .  .  
84

To find out what lines are associated with a particular delta, you can pipe the output through grep(1V):

$ sccs get -m -p program.c | grep '^1.2'

You can also use -p by itself to send the retrieved version to the standard output, rather than to the file.

Creating Reports: sccs prs -d

You can use the prs subcommand with the -d dataspec option to derive reports about files under SCCS control. The dataspec argument offers a rich set of data keywords that correspond to portions of the history file. Data keywords take the form:

:X :

and are listed in Table 5-3. There is no limit to the number of times a data keyword can appear in the dataspec argument. A valid dataspec argument is a (quoted) string consisting of text and data keywords. prs replaces each recognized keyword with the appropriate value from the history file.

The format of a data keyword value is either simple, in which case the expanded value is a simple string, or multiline, in which case the expansion includes RETURN characters.

A TAB is specified by `\t' and a RETURN by `\n'.

Here are some examples:

$ sccs prs -d"Users and/or user IDs for :F: are:\n:UN:" program.c 
Users and/or user IDs for s.program.c are:
zeno
pers
$ sccs prs -d"Newest delta for :M:: :I:.  Created :D: by :P:." -r program.c 
Newest delta for program.c: 1.3.  Created 88/07/22 by zeno.