[TUHS] SCCS roach motel

[Dan Cross]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 8:12 PM Marc Rochkind <mrochkind at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 2:10 PM Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I had heard a story once, that based on what you wrote today, I now
>> think is apocryphal and never actually happened.
>>
>> The story was that there was a bug in early SCCS where a source file
>> had to be checked in twice before it could be (successfully) checked
>> out. The bug was such that if one only checked it in once and tried to
>> check it out, it would truncate the file. "Programmers using it just
>> learned to check in twice."
>>
>> I never used SCCS extensively, and certainly never observed that
>> behavior, so chucked it up to the bug having been long fixed. As I
>> mentioned above, I doubt it was ever there to begin with. A fun story,
>> though.
>
> This is completely ridiculous. No program I wrote ever had one of those bug things.

Oh dear, I do hope no offense was taken.  As I said, I firmly believe
the story was apocryphal.

The identity of the person from whom I heard it is probably known to
at least some of the USENIX old school crew; I rather thought at the
time they were under the impression that SCCS was the result of a
large team, or perhaps some kind of fork.

Anyway, I don't mean to belabor the point. Please accept my apologies
if the story rubbed you the wrong way.

        - Dan C.