@cindex back end (version control)
VC currently works with many different version control systems or
-``back ends'':
+@dfn{back ends}:
@comment Omitting bzr because support is very scratchy and incomplete.
superseded by later and more advanced ones; Emacs supports it only for
backward compatibility and historical reasons. VC compensates for
certain features missing in SCCS (e.g., tag names for releases) by
-implementing them itself. Other VC features, such as multiple
+implementing them itself. Other VC features, such as multiple
branches, are simply unavailable. Since SCCS is non-free, we
recommend avoiding it.
@cindex git
@item
-Git is a version control system invented by Linus Torvalds to support
+Git is a distributed version control system invented by Linus Torvalds to support
Linux kernel development. It supports atomic commits of filesets and
file moving/renaming. One significant feature of git is that it
largely abolishes the notion of a single centralized repository;
@cindex bzr
@cindex Bazaar
@item
-Bazaar (bzr) is a version control system that supports both
+Bazaar (bzr) is a distributed version control system that supports both
repository-based and distributed versioning, with atomic fileset
commits and file moving/renaming. VC supports most basic editing
operations under Bazaar.
SCCS always uses locking. RCS is lock-based by default but can be
told to operate in a merging style. CVS and Subversion are
merge-based by default but can be told to operate in a locking mode.
-Most later version-control systems, such as GNU Arch, git, and
+Most distributed version-control systems, such as GNU Arch, git, and
Mercurial, are based exclusively on merging rather than locking. This
is because experience has shown that merging is generally superior to
locking, both in convenience to developers and in minimizing the
multiple files has to be backed out, it's good to be able to easily
identify and remove all of it. But it took some years for designers
to figure that out, and while file-based systems are passing out of
-use there are lots of legacy repositories still to be dealt with at
-time of writing (2008).
+use, there are lots of legacy repositories still to be dealt with as
+of this writing (2008).
Older versions of VC supported only file-based systems, leading to
some unhappy results when it was used to drive changeset-based