GNU CSSC

Introduction to CSSC

CSSC is the GNU Project's replacement for SCCS. SCCS is a proprietary suite of tools which is provided with most commercial versions of Unix. The purpose behind CSSC is to provide a work-alike for SCCS which can be used on the various Free versions of Unix.

What is SCCS?

SCCS was the only major form of source code control on Unix platforms for many years, until RCS came along. SCCS was an effective method for small projects, but these days is less popular, particularly for projects involving large numbers of files. A fair amount of old software is still in SCCS form, and CSSC is designed to retrieve that software. Once retrieved, it is highly recommended to bring the source under the control of more modern source code control systems, such as git or Apache Subversion.

History

The history of CSSC is documented in a separate page.

Downloading CSSC

CSSC can be found on http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/cssc/ [via http] and ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/cssc/ [via FTP]. It can also be found on one of our FTP mirrors.

The latest bleeding-edge version of the source code, along with a revision history, can be found in the CSSC Savannah repository. Assuming you have git installed, you can retrieve the bleeding-edge version with the following command:

git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/cssc.git

The bleeding-edge version contains a file README-hacking that contains instructions for building from bleeding-edge sources. Please note that we do not suggest using test versions of CSSC for production use.

Documentation

A manual is available online. You may also find more information about CSSC by looking at your local documentation. For example, you might try info cssc at the shell prompt.

Mailing Lists

You can subscribe to any GNU mailing list via the web. See for example the web page for the cssc-users@gnu.org mailing list. If you don't have convenient web access, you can send an empty mail with a Subject: header line of just "subscribe" to the relevant -request list. For example, to subscribe yourself to the cssc-users list, you would send mail to <cssc-users-request@gnu.org> with no body and a Subject: header line of just "subscribe".

It has been necessary to moderate the CSSC mailing list to prevent the flood of spam. Postings to the lists are held for release by the list moderator. Sometimes the moderators are unavailable for brief periods of time. Please be patient when posting. If you don't see the message in the list archive then it did not get posted.

Announcements

Important announcements about CSSC and most other GNU Software are also made on <info-gnu@gnu.org>.

Test releases of CSSC are announced on the <cssc-users@gnu.org> mailing list.

Enhancement Requests and Bug Reports

CSSC's goal is compatibility with SCCS. Incompatibilities between the two (except for the removal of arbitrary limits) are bugs in CSSC. Please report bugs in CSSC via the CSSC bug reporting page. First though, please check that the bug hasn't already been fixed in a later release of CSSC.

If you would like any new feature to be included in future versions of CSSC, please make your suggestion on the <cssc-users@gnu.org> mailing list.

Please remember that development of CSSC is a volunteer effort, and you can also contribute to its development. For information about contributing to the GNU Project, please read How to help GNU.

Maintainer

CSSC was written and is currently being maintained by James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>.