Joseph K. Myers
Tuesday, November 4, 2003
This has been sitting here, also, for a long time.
It is a version control tool for single files.
Maybe the coolest thing about "new" is the ability to do this:
% new index.html < index.html Creating file (v.2): 1 Linking index.html: 1
This ordinarily would result in overwriting the file index.html, but with new it does not. It overcomes the reasons that make it impossible to use the easy way to copy a file into itself without new. You can then edit the file and make changes, with a fully preserved previous version.
In fact, a similar command should be done every time you wish to start a new version of a file.
A directory called versions is stored inside every directory where new is used.