Uwe Brauer writes: vc.el can handle this, and will do the right thing automatically. RCS cannot. In order to use vc/RCS for this case, you *must* use a workflow something like the following (at shell level, I'm not sure how this would work in vc.el offhand). Author 1: co shared-file.txt # --> v1.2 of file rcs -b 1.2.1 # note branch number is same as author number ci -l shared-file.txt # edit file ci shared-file.txt # --> v1.2.1.1 of file Author 2: co shared-file.txt # --> v1.2 of file rcs -b 1.2.2 # note branch number is same as author number ci -l shared-file.txt # edit file ci shared-file.txt # --> v1.2.2.1 of file Editor: ;; uses vc-merge to merge v1.2.1.1 and v1.2.2.1 C-x v v ; should check in v1.3 as the merged file RCS *does not* support the above workflow automatically. That was the initial innovation of CVS (the network server stuff came later). CVS (and Subversion) servers being a bitch to administer, I suggest that you move to one of git, Mercurial, or Bazaar for your VCS, because they are quite happy to operate without the cost of a server, and their servers are very easy to administer if you later decide to set one up. All of them can handle your workflow seamlessly. You may find that vc.el supports some of them better than others; I don't have much information on that yet. I know that you'd like to stick with RCS because it's familiar to you and all your collaborators have it and know it already. I am nevertheless *quite* confident that the effort of changing to any of git, hg, or bzr will be repaid within the week! If you decide to optimize the choice by doing a more careful comparison of the candidates, it might take a month. ;-) I suggest simply asking your collaborators to report the results of "git --version; hg --version; bzr --version", and go with the one that seems most widely installed already. Caveat: if you have collaborators who use Windows, then you may get better results by using hg or bzr. It could be more expensive if you have a lot of history that you'd like to move to the new VCS. Write me offlist if that is the case. I can help with that. _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta