RCS is a pretty excellent tool when you have a single file (like httpd.conf, hosts, a zone file) that you want to manage on a server. 80%+ sysadmins know how to ci/co and use rcs in that context. Likely less than 10% of sysadmins would grok the use of git in that context.
Also - does git even have the concept of "check out with lock, check in free lock, etc?"
Git was released in 2005. I will bet you a dollar that about 80% of the sysadmins in the world have been working with some kind of revision control since before 2005. It follows that they would have been familiar with something other than the Git model. Combine this with the laughable idea that not every sysadmin knows git, and the parent statement makes sense.
Also, your experience is probably not exactly the same as 80% of sysadmins. But I don't have a citation for that.
"some kind of revision control" =/= rcs, and eight years is quite a while. I'd happily bet that more sysadmins know git than rcs if you find a measurement.
3-5 years ago what I saw was some CVS, some subversion. Nowadays it's some subversion, some git, maybe a bit of CVS hanging around. I had literally never heard of any sysadmins (or in fact anyone except one aging college professor) still using rcs prior to this thread.
If you've used Subversion, you've used CVS. If you've used CVS, you've used RCS. My whole point was that your average sysadmin is familiar with an RCS model, versus the Git model, which is incredibly different and a huge learning curve over older tools.
There are a lot of sysadmins out there. Most of them are older than 25, and most of them do not work in Silicon Valley. They work on all kinds of systems, for all kinds of companies. Any company that's been in operation for more than 10 years has files managed by CVS, or RCS if they've been around longer. They probably also use other tools and systems you've never heard of.
But that's OK. Today you'll get hired to manage new systems with new tools. In years to come, somebody will tell you how nobody uses SVN or Git anymore, and they've never heard of anyone that does.
That would explain it - you've probably been working with sysadmins who've been doing their job for less than 10 years. Any Unix sysadmin with more than 10 years experience knows rcs very well. You typically see subversion where there is a server involved in version control.
It's what I learned in College, saw again at Netscape, again at Loudcloud/Opsware (though, for source control of code, they used Clearcase of all things. Shudder.) - always for the purpose of managing a single file. Once there was more than one file, something else was typically used.
I've been using etckeeper on all my machines for a while. It is a wrapper around git + some hook scripts to preserve file permissions and the existence of empty directories. I can't imagine going back to an unmanaged /etc directory now.
RCS is a pretty excellent tool when you have a single file (like httpd.conf, hosts, a zone file) that you want to manage on a server. 80%+ sysadmins know how to ci/co and use rcs in that context. Likely less than 10% of sysadmins would grok the use of git in that context.
Also - does git even have the concept of "check out with lock, check in free lock, etc?"