How To Install RCS On Your WestHost VPS

RCS is a simple software version control system used to keep track of changes to text files. It is rarely used today to manage large software projects, but is still appropriate for system configuration files. The following steps will download and build the RCS software distribution, then install only the binary executables since WestHost does not allow you to store into the /usr/local/man directory.

The only documentation for RCS is the man pages, so you may wish to find some way to consult them. You will find them in the distribution, in directory rcs-5.7/man . They are written in a notation that is input to groff which is invoked by the man command. Neither groff nor man is installed on a standard WestHost VPS. Refer to the man pages on a standalone Unix or Linux system, starting with man rcsintro .

Installing

  1. Screen grab of WestHost Site Applications Use the WestHost SITE MANAGER to install the GNU Compiler Collection.
  2. Log in to your VPS and give the following command line commands:
    1. Download the RCS distribution package:
      wget http://www.bigsearcher.com/gnu/rcs/rcs-5.7.tar.gz
    2. Unpack it:
      tar zxf rcs-5.7.tar.gz
    3. Change directory to the distribution:
      cd rcs-5.7
    4. Build the software:
      ./configure && make
    5. Install only the binaries:
      cd src; make install
    6. If you want to remove the RCS distribution to save space:
      cd; rm -rf rcs-5.7*

Uninstalling

To remove RCS from your VPS, do the following:

  1. cd /usr/local/bin
  2. rm -f ci co ident merge rcs* rlog

Last modified: Sunday, May 27 2007 at 7:49:54 AM MDT