Re: How to delete file in RCS

[Sam Lee]

On 2021-11-04, Dario Niedermann wrote:
> The best approach, though, is to have `make` check out the files as
> they are needed. So you never have to do "the big check out" on
> RCS/*,v. If 'useless.c' is never mentioned in the Makefile as a
> prerequisite, it won't be checked out.

Thank you. That is an interesting approach I didn't think of. However,
I have a few concerns:

- How do I deal with files that are not normally listed in makefiles?
  For example, some projects have README, LICENSE, and CHANGELOG files
  that are not normally listed in the Makefile. It seems a bit "forced"
  if one has to include these files in the Makefile just for RCS.

- Isn't this excessively dependent on the Makefile? The entire history
  of the project relies on the Makefile as a central reference for what
  files are present at a given time. Furthermore, not all projects use
  `make`, especially those written in other programming languages such
  as Java or Python.