So I am working through the Absolute BSD book, getting my new FreeBSD install up and running. Early in the book, Lucas talks about using RCS to control your commonly-revised admin files. I had no idea that RCS was already on the system. I had even less of an idea as to how simple it was to use. If you are just getting into *nix, take the time to learn RCS. You can have an annotated and commented revision history for your key files, such as /etc/profile, /etc/rc.conf, etc. (Was that redundant?)

I will try to add in an example, but I am really pressed for time these days. If you want to know more, check out the book! It is a great complement to the other available documentation.

Now, if any developers are reading this and wailing at the mention of RCS, bear in mind that I am talking about using RCS for system administration tasks. Yes, there are better options for revision control, but for the average administrator, RCS is ubiquitous enough and presents a minimal learning curve. It seems to me to be a great fit for adding some process to the average *nix administrative workload.

For development, I don’t have too many problems with CVS. However, I am checking out Subversion based on some recommendations I have read. The only thing that bugs me is the use of non-text data stores, but for all the things it offers, I can’t get too hung up on that quirk.