On 22/09/2025 16:31, Jeff Law via Gcc wrote: > > > On 9/22/25 9:25 AM, Richard Earnshaw (lists) via Gcc wrote: >> On 20/09/2025 15:15, Mark Wielaard wrote: >> >>> Maybe someone else has other/older releases? Or maybe they can be >>> reconstructed from git, svn, cvs or rcs files? >> >> I don't think so. The git history that far back is very incomplete. In the >> early days of gcc development, I think history was kept by using emacs >> revision files (copies of the source with a version number (a bit like VMS). >> When there were too many copies and it seemed like there would be no need >> to revert a change the older ones were simply deleted. > Absolutely correct. Unless someone happens to have a tarball or backup tapes > from the old "mole" system at the FSF, odds are that history is lost forever. > > jeff
And another thing I remember from when I first started hacking on GCC back in the first half of the '90s is that when files were renamed or moved, the RCS file was simply renamed accordingly. Even worse, when a file was deleted, so was its RCS file. Oh how naive we were back then; but storage was at a premium... R.
