GNU RCS 5.10.0 available

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

release notes:

  A spate of bugfixes, new support for nanosecond mtime, etc.

README excerpt:

  GNU RCS (Revision Control System) manages multiple revisions of files.
  RCS can store, retrieve, log, identify, and merge revisions.
  It is useful for files that are revised frequently, e.g.,
  programs, documentation, graphics, and papers.

NEWS for 5.10.0 (2020-10-20):

  - bug fixes

    - RCS file search skipped RCS/FILENAME by default

      The default set of candidate filenames for the RCS file is:

       RCS/FILENAME,v
       RCS/FILENAME
       FILENAME,v

      RCS 5.8 (released 2011-08-30) introduced a bug which caused the
      default RCS file search to skip RCS/FILENAME.  Regression fixed.

    - ‘rlog -w’ behaved like ‘rlog’ (sans ‘-w’)

      RCS 5.8 (released 2011-08-30) introduced a bug which caused
      ‘rlog -w’ (without any logins specified) to fail to default to
      the user login.  Instead it behaved as if option ‘-w’ were
      omitted entirely.

      The cases where logins are specified (e.g., ‘rlog -wjrhacker’)
      were not affected.

    - missing string in comma-v detected, diagnosed

      Previously, if foo,v contained fragment:

       1.1
       log
       text
       @@

      i.e., there was no string value following the ‘log’ keyword,
      then rlog (et al) would interpret that as an "empty log message"
      instead of as a violation of the RCS file format grammar, which
      stipulates that a string value must follow the keywords ‘desc’,
      ‘log’ and ‘text’ -- (info "(rcs) comma-v grammar").

      Now, such a situation causes rlog (et al) to abort w/ message
      "missing string after KEYWORD" (KEYWORD ∈ {desc, log, text}).

    - subsecond resolution maintained for ‘-d’, ‘-T’

      An RCS ‘delta’ includes a ‘date’ component w/ second (whole
      number) resolution.  Previously, on filesystems that support
      subsecond (fractional) resolution for the file modification time
      (aka "mtime"), RCS commands given the ‘-d’ and/or ‘-T’ options
      would disregard, on read, and specify 0 (zero), on write, the
      fractional mtime.

      Now, RCS preserves subsecond mtime in those cases.  More details
      in new manual section -- (info "(rcs) Stamp resolution").

  - portability fixes

    - now buildable under ‘gcc -std=c11’ (default for GCC 5)

      RCS previously failed to build under ‘-std=c11’, which happens
      to be the default mode of GCC 5.  In particular, ‘-std=c11’ is
      more strict about function attributes syntax than ‘-std=c99’.

      Now, the offending code has been rectified.  (Specifically,
      attribute ‘_Noreturn’ now is at the start of a func decl.)

    - threads support

      RCS itself is clueless about threads, but it uses gnulib, which
      may or may not require threads support.  This manifests as the
      configure script options ‘--enable-threads=MODEL’ as well as
      ‘--disable-threads’.

      Previously, "make" would ignore MODEL (even implicitly), acting
      as if ‘--disable-threads’ were specified.  Now, it takes into
      account MODEL by propagating makefile var ‘LIBTHREAD’.

    - consult ‘USER’ first if ‘LOGNAME’ read-only

      To determine the user (login) name in the absence of a specific
      command-line option, RCS normally checks first the env var
      ‘LOGNAME’ and second, ‘USER’.  Alas, this is unworkable under
      AIX, where ‘LOGNAME’ is read-only.  So now, if the configure
      script finds ‘LOGNAME’ to be read-only, it arranges to build RCS
      to check ‘USER’ first and then ‘LOGNAME’.  See README.

    - configure script avoids ‘date -r’

      Unfortunately ‘date -r’ is not POSIX.  This made AIX unhappy.

    - other AIX accomodation

      The AIX compiler complains about the implicit casting that
      occurs when returning a pointer from a function whose return
      type is ‘bool’.  So, we are now explicit.

  - documentation improvements

    - docfix: add "Log message option" to Detailed Node Listing

      Probably Emacs by now has some automagic way to sync the
      ‘@detailmenu’ section w/ the text body... hmmm.

    - style change due to ‘-zZONE’ option

      Specifying option ‘-zZONE’ to ‘rcs log’ changes the date output
      style to use hyphens (ISO) instead of slashes (YYYY/MM/DD).

    - rlog, use with CVS

      Since RCS 5.8 (released 2011-08-30), there have been sporadic
      reports of rlog (aka "rcs log") failing with CVS files.  The
      manual now addresses this -- (info "(rcs) comma-v particulars").

    - delim-separated list

      GNU RCS has always supported comma to separate items in a list
      (e.g., ‘rcs frob -o1.1,2.2’ to remove (or "outdate") revisions
      1.1 and 2.2).  But did you know that most places a comma is
      welcome and you can use other delimiter characters as well?
      Read all about it -- (info "(rcs) Delim-separated list").

    - (style) pargraphs no longer indented

      This looks nicer (IMHO) for Info and Text output formats.

  - testing improvements

    Many new tests and test cases for existing tests were added, to
    catch regressions and exercise infrequent code paths.  For "make
    check" (locally), function coverage is 97.3% (considered "high")
    and line coverage is 84.9% (considered "medium"), per lcov.

  - bootstrap/maintenance tools

    upgraded:

     GNU gnulib 2020-10-19 23:37:09
     GNU texinfo 6.7
     GNU Automake 1.16.2
     GNU Autoconf 2.69c

    as before:

     (none)

tarballs and detached signatures:

  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/rcs/rcs-5.10.0.tar.lz
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/rcs/rcs-5.10.0.tar.lz.sig
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/rcs/rcs-5.10.0.tar.xz
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/rcs/rcs-5.10.0.tar.xz.sig

source code:

  https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/rcs.git/?h=p

homepage:

  https://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/

-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen -----------------------------------------------
 (defun responsep (query)               ; (2020) Software Libero
   (pcase (context query)               ;       = Dissenso Etico
     (`(technical ,ml) (correctp ml))
     ...))                              748E A0E8 1CB8 A748 9BFA
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