The Librarian (version control system)
The Librarian is a version control system and source code management software product originally developed by Applied Data Research for IBM mainframe computers.
[3][4][5] During its early years, Applied Data Research (ADR) was developing Autoflow, a program for automatic flowcharting, which is often cited as one of the first commercial software applications.
[6] The ADR staff wanted something to help manage the increasing size of the Autoflow source code base.
[1] Martin Goetz, an ADR co-founder, had used the UNITYPER system during a prior employment with Sperry Rand.
[7] Goetz realized that source code did not have to live on punched cards, but instead could be kept in stable magnetic storage; a program called the Librarian that did this was then built for in-house use.
[8][9] At this point, Librarian master files were kept on magnetic tape; an advertisement that ADR ran in Datamation in 1970 related the story of being able to save Librarian tapes when a fire broke out, whereas it would have been impossible to save the equivalent amount of source code had it been in punched card file cabinets.
[14] Per a survey that ADR conducted amongst its customers, use of the Librarian significantly increased programmer productivity, especially in the areas of ongoing maintenance and enhancement of existing applications.
As recollected by Pansophic's founder, Joseph A. Piscopo, "Panvalet and Librarian basically divided the program library market between the two of them....
"[2] The punched card was at the time the model for many kinds of computer input, including for those representing source code.
[4] While Librarian insert/replace/deletion operations were tractible for modifications to existing code, they were an awkward vehicle in which to write new programs, where large numbers of changes or refactorings would often take place.
Once the program was in a working state, however, normal Librarian updates would be done in order to keep track of changes to the module.
[28] The Librarian went through a series of releases, both to add new functionality and to support changes in IBM mainframe environments.
[29] An illustration of an enhancement was the addition of the LIB/AM interface in 1983, which allowed the Librarian to appear like a partitioned data set to certain programs and utilities.
[27] By 1986, the Librarian Release 3.5 was out, introducing a Change Control Facility for greater management and awareness of the software development cycle.
[21][33] Early 1988 saw version 3.7 which added the Change Control Facility to the CMS/ISPF environment [33] Release 3.8 of the Librarian came out later in 1988, just as the product was being acquired by Computer Associates.
[23] This was, as one of the creators of it said, "a radical departure from conventional methods for controlling source code",[35] and gave more flexibility for complicated situations such as branching.
[23] SCCS was actually originally written for IBM OS/370,[35] but found favor on the UNIX operating system for the PDP-11 where it was included in the Programmer's Workbench.
