Editing Source Code Control System (section)

{{Short description|Version control system for source code}}
{{More citations needed|date=March 2010}}
{{Infobox software
| name                   = Source Code Control System (SCCS)
| logo                   =
| screenshot             =
| caption                =
| author                 = [[Marc Rochkind|Marc J. Rochkind]]
| developer              = [[Bell Labs]]<!-- no official active development -->
| released               = {{Start date and age|1973}}
| latest release version = 
| latest release date    =
| latest preview version =
| latest preview date    =
| programming language   = First version: [[SNOBOL|SNOBOL4]]<br />Rewrite: [[C (programming language)|C]]
| operating system       = [[OS/360]], [[Unix]], [[Unix-like]]
| platform               = [[IBM System/370]], [[PDP-11]], [[IA-32]]
| genre                  = [[Version control]]
| license                = proprietary licenses, [[Common Development and Distribution License]]
| repo                   = N/A
| website                = {{URL|http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/sccs.html| The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, 2016 Edition}}
}}
'''Source Code Control System''' ('''SCCS''') is a [[version control|version control system]] designed to track changes in [[source code]] and other text files during the development of a piece of software. This allows the user to retrieve any of the previous versions of the original source code and the changes which are stored. It was originally developed at [[Bell Labs]] beginning in late 1972 by [[Marc Rochkind]] for an [[IBM System/370]] computer running [[OS/360]].<ref name = "r1">{{Citation |last=Rochkind |first=Marc J. |url=http://basepath.com/aup/talks/SCCS-Slideshow.pdf |title=The Source Code Control System |periodical=IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering |volume=SE-1 |issue=4 |date=December 1975 |pages=364–370 |doi=10.1109/tse.1975.6312866 |s2cid=10006076 |access-date=2005-07-08 |archive-date=2011-05-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110525193926/http://basepath.com/aup/talks/SCCS-Slideshow.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

A characteristic feature of SCCS is the ''sccsid'' string that is embedded into source code, and automatically updated by SCCS for each revision.<ref name="Oracle">{{Cite web|url=http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19504-01/802-5880/6i9k05dhp/index.html|title=Chapter 5 SCCS Source Code Control System|last=Oracle|website=Programming Utilities Guide}}</ref> This example illustrates its use in the [[C (programming language)|C programming language]]:
<syntaxhighlight lang="c">
 static char sccsid[] = "@(#)ls.c        8.1 (Berkeley) 6/11/93";
</syntaxhighlight>
This [[String (computer science)|string]] contains the file name, date, and can also contain a comment. After compilation, the string can be found in binary and object files by looking for the pattern <code>@(#)</code> and can be used to determine which [[source code]] files were used during compilation. The <code>what</code> command is available to automate this search for version strings.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/what.html |title=what |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=n.d. |publisher=IEEE and The Open Group |access-date=November 28, 2022}}</ref>