11 Recording Old Versions

It is very important to keep backup files of all source files of GNU. You can do this using a source control system (such as Bazaar, RCS, CVS, Git, Subversion, …) if you like. An easy way to use many such systems is via the Version Control library in Emacs (see Introduction to Version Control in The GNU Emacs Manual).

The history of previous revisions and log entries is very important for future maintainers of the package, so even if you do not make it publicly accessible, be careful not to put anything in the repository or change log that you would not want to hand over to another maintainer some day.

The GNU Project provides a server that GNU packages can use for source control and other package needs: savannah.gnu.org. Savannah is managed by [email protected]. For more details on using and contributing to Savannah, see https://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance.

It’s not an absolute requirement, but all GNU maintainers are strongly encouraged to take advantage of Savannah, as sharing such a central point can serve to foster a sense of community among GNU developers as well as help in keeping up with project management. Please don’t mark Savannah projects for GNU packages as private; that defeats a large part of the purpose of using Savannah in the first place.

If you do use Savannah, please subscribe to the [email protected] mailing list (https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/savannah-announce). This is a very low-volume list to keep Savannah users informed of system upgrades, problems, and the like.