Version Numbers

[Rainer Blome]

> ... worth wasting time worrying about this?
Sure!
Again, if we had what we wanted (i.e. an OO system), it'd be trivial:

  o Every versioned object (preferrably down to single methods) maintains
    an (RCS-like) version-number of itself.

  o This number changes (like in RCS) when the owner (locker) of that
    object decides to take a snapshot of the current state (i.e. the versions
    of the components).

  o Branching and creating sets of versions with permutations of
    orthogonal features (versions/snapshots of components) is equivalent to
    cloning and modifying.  RCS already allows arbitrary names for
    snapshots, but they should be in addition to numbers.

  o Since this scheme is object-based, it is just as file-based and
    hierarchichal as the objects are, which is what you'd expect.

Multi-user access will surely complicate things, but that seems inevitable
to me.

Rainer