I intend to orphan the rcs package. It is in good shape from the Debian
perspective, however the software itself can now be considered legacy.
Unfortunately the upstream maintainer passed away a few months ago and
it's not clear that RCS will be picked up by someone else in the GNU
project.

I guess the package could also be removed along with its reverse
dependencies to no great loss to the project as a whole.

The package description is:
 The Revision Control System (RCS) manages multiple
 revisions of files. RCS automates the storing, retrieval,
 logging, identification, and merging of revisions. RCS is
 useful for text that is revised frequently, for example
 programs, documentation, graphics, papers, and form letters.
 .
 Note: this package contains certain general-purpose commands
 (such as merge or ident) which may used by other programs
 installed on your system.

The Debian packaging can be found in the shared Debian group on Salsa:

https://salsa.debian.org/debian/rcs

Hi Debian, Assistance GNUisances team here :)

We currently have 2 people listed as GNU RCS maintainers: Amin Bandali
and Paul Eggert (both CC'd).  Amin volunteered after Thien-Thi's fatal
accident and Paul seems to have been an RCS maintainer even before
Thien-Thi became one.

A quick glance at the archives of one of RCS mailing lists shows that
at least Paul is still active [1].

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-rcs/

For managing hierarchy of files in something like a software project
everyone is likely to pick a modern VCS like Git or Mercurial, I agree.
Nonetheless, I've recently met with opinion that there's no better
single-file VCS than RCS.  So there's at least this niche use case.

Hope this helps.  Best!
Wojtek

Yes, I've been committing fixes, most recently a couple of months ago. See:

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/rcs.git/log/?h=next

... and I expect there will be a new release one of these days.

Hello all,

I would like to adopt this package with Amin Bandali as the sponsor
(CCed). Once a new upstream release is out, I will prepare to make a new
upload.

That's great news. Thanks all.

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
rcs, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 1095421@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Luke Yasuda <jing@jing.rocks> (supplier of updated rcs package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:54:43 -0300
Source: rcs
Architecture: source
Version: 5.10.1-4
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Luke Yasuda <jing@jing.rocks>
Changed-By: Luke Yasuda <jing@jing.rocks>
Closes: 1095421
Changes:
 rcs (5.10.1-4) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   * d/control: wrap and sort
   * d/control: upgrade standards version to 4.7.4
   * d/control: upgrade debhelper compatibility level to 14
   * d/control: build deps: replace pkg-config with pkgconf
   * d/control: change maintainer to me (Closes: #1095421)
   * d/control: add Amin to uploaders
   * d/copyright: convert to machine readable format
   * d/watch: upgrade to version 5
   * add an upstream signing key
   * add a lintian override to stop lintian form moaning
   * add a patch header
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 3000905ca3cc9bde5aa990273f6966628b567da5 9888 rcs_5.10.1-4.debian.tar.xz
 cd5ccdab0ec9bf32f5bab1620a3a1960270beb2f 6973 rcs_5.10.1-4_source.buildinfo
Checksums-Sha256:
 43c9f791a3d7a56d9b3c43924a32db8f4a8715241de57af52bf05eca3d283808 1905 rcs_5.10.1-4.dsc
 a788870a465e25e4885984e015364afafc0681010e71e930cdde236cbfab836a 9888 rcs_5.10.1-4.debian.tar.xz
 2280a709fcb224ff7a601314cbd150fbb4644a363ce3066a7c8c4c76f9b9a962 6973 rcs_5.10.1-4_source.buildinfo
Files:
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 4b43859f77ea34f2d6a18e34dd4857ad 9888 vcs optional rcs_5.10.1-4.debian.tar.xz
 d73d64574275ffe7d9909131c855f378 6973 vcs optional rcs_5.10.1-4_source.buildinfo
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