> Let's start with what I'm not interested in. I'm not interested in a
> debate on different version control systems or on the usefulness of
> version control in general.
>
> What I am interested in is what *existing* strategies may have been used
> in the past (or are used now) for doing version control using Forths
> that stored source using *true* blocks.
>
> Note carefully that I make two qualifications here: First, I'm only
> interested in *existing* strategies because I'm looking for something
> that has been proven by others, not an abstract discussion about what
> possibly could be done. Second, I'm asking about Forth systems that are
> based on *true* blocks, not blocks implemented on top of files since the
> trivial answer in that case would be to version control the files
> holding blocks.
>
> I appreciate that such a version control system might be ultra-minimal
> and not offer features like branching, tagging, differencing, and
> merging, etc.. It might only offer manual roll-back of a specific block
> to a prior state, or possibly a grand snapshot of all blocks captured at
> a particular point in time. Whatever-- I'm just looking for past
> strategies.
Sorry, I can't give you *existing* strategies because we don't use
blocks any more, but I can tell you how we managed during the 20 years
that we did use block-based systems on rather large projects.
In earlier days, we followed the same approach as John Doty, and kept
labeled & dated floppy disk backups. Later, on systems with respectable
amounts of hard disk, we kept locally 3 generations of backup on line,
in addition to labeled, dated floppies.
We never developed a block-based version control system per se, but we
did develop an auditing system in polyFORTH that could be used to
compare a current vs. previous version (its primary purpose was to help
integrate work from 2 or more engineers, rather like Beyond Compare
which we use today). You fed it two starting ranges of blocks, and it
would show which blocks within the range differ. You could then display
differing blocks side-by-side (or above/below, or toggling back and
forth with 1 key, depending on your screen dimensions) with differences
highlighted, and accept or reject the changes. That code is still
around somewhere, I'm sure.
Cheers,
Elizabeth
--
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Elizabeth D. Rather (US & Canada) 800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc. +1 310.999.6784
5959 West Century Blvd. Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045
http://www.forth.com
"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
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