How to delete file in RCS

[Sam Lee]

Hello,

I have a software project that consists of multiple files. All files are
version-controlled by RCS. Now, I want to remove one file from the
project (because it has become useless after I refactored my code).
How do I delete the file, while preserving its history in RCS?

I cannot do `rm RCS/useless.c,v` because I want to preserve history
(i.e. I want to be able to build old versions of my software). Instead,
I could simply delete the contents of the file and check in the empty
file (i.e. `co -l useless.c`, followed by `> useless.c` to delete the
contents, followed by `ci -m'Emptied the file' useless.c`). However,
`co RCS/*,v` would still check out the file. This is messy if I have
many "deleted" files, because `co RCS/*,v` would check out all the
"deleted" files too.

The other solution I have thought of is to give a new symbolic name to
all files in my project whenever one file gets a new revision. For
example, right after the first ever check in of the files in the
project, I would give all files a symbolic name of "V_1" (using
`rcs -nV_1: *`). Then, whenever I make a revision to any file, I would
increment the project-wide version number. For example, after making a
new revision to example.c, I would give a new symbolic name "V_2" to all
files (`rcs -nV_2: *`). This is somewhat similar to rcsfreeze, except
that this adds symbolic names to the checked out files only (not to all
RCS/*,v files). This allows files to be "deleted" easily; files are
"deleted" by not giving them a symbolic name with an updated version
number. I can then check out the latest version of my software using
`co -rV_x RCS/*,v`, where x is the highest version number. However, this
approach seems cumbersome and error-prone (when incrementing version
numbers), and every file will have a very long list of symbolic names.

I'm sure that I am missing something, since I am just a beginner in RCS.
What is the "proper" way to manage the deletion of files in a multi-file
project version-controlled by RCS?

Best regards,
Sam Lee