THE SCOPE
SCCS, RCS, CVS, distributed systems, repository object models and provenance.
This starting dossier establishes a research remit and reference points for the section. It does not claim to be a comprehensive historical survey. Future articles will identify primary evidence, publication or artifact dates, competing accounts and the limits of verification.
From revisions to connected histories
RCS documents file revisions and their metadata; Git organizes commits, trees and blobs as a content-addressed object model.
A commit is evidence, not a biography
Git records author and committer fields, dates and messages; these need independent corroboration for historical attribution.
Diffs can be reconstructed
The Git technical documentation describes object snapshots and parent relationships, with diffs derived for inspection rather than stored as the essential content of a commit.
OPEN QUESTIONS / NOT ASSUMPTIONS
Questions that guide the reporting.
- 01Which system or release is being compared?
- 02Are claims based on official documentation or folklore?
- 03How are amended history and attribution handled?
PRIMARY & TECHNICAL REFERENCES
Starting sources
The references below are paths into the evidence, not a claim that every historical question is settled. Each future article will provide its own direct citations and version-specific evidence.
- 01GNU — RCS overview www.gnu.org
- 02Git — core data model github.com
- 03Pro Git — a short history git-scm.com
VERSION RECORD / 1.0
This dossier is revisable.
2026-10-08 — Initial edition. Research scope, evidence lenses, questions and reference starting points published. No external submissions have been reviewed for this initial edition. Future substantive changes should be documented with supporting evidence.
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