RCS keyword error

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vhunter

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I am attempting to use RCS (Revision Control System) on my XP Home box, but whenever I try to check in any file it gives me the following error:

ci: RCS/test.c:1: missing 'head' keyword
ci aborted

I have searched wide and far for this so-called "head" keyword, but nothing comes up. Is there something I'm doing wrong? Here's the command I enter:

C:\rcs\win32>ci -u test.c

Most of the people using RCS that I've found have had no problems with this command, but it always and invariably gives me the error whenever I do anything with RCS, even checkout. The error also comes up when I check in empty files. Here's the mirror I got my RCS files from:
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/trinkle/RCS/
Should I try to find source code to compile instead of the executables?
 
I was just having the same error. I finally realized I was trying to extract a non-RCS file (i.e. a plain text file).

Make sure you don't have a file in your RCS subdirectory with the same name. RCS creates a new file with a ",v" extension. If a non-RCS formatted file with that name exists, RCS won't be able to do anything with your file.

For example,
if your working in /home/user, create a /home/user/RCS directory. If you check file temp.log into RCS (ci -u temp.log), RCS will create a file called /home/user/RCS/temp.log,v . The ",v" file will have an RCS header and then the file information.
My error was because I had a file name /home/user/RCS/temp.log that was not an RCS file. RCS was trying to process the non-RCS file but couldn't find the required 'head' keywords.


Hope this helps, even though the above might be a little confusing.
 
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