RCS 5.8 complains about "junk at end of file"

[Warren Jones]

After updating to RCS 5.8, our users are seeing error messages like this:

  eg> co -l file.txt
  co: RCS/file.txt,v:783: junk at end of file: '1'
  co aborted

After reading the release notes, I understand what's going on here:

  Previously, "rcs -o" (outdating) all revisions failed
  to leave the RCS file in a consistent state; edit info
  (i.e., log message + diff(1) output) remained for the
  deleted revisions ...

  Previously, RCS file syntax was validated lazily,
  and trailing garbage was not detected (see bugfix above).
  Now, a top-level validation is done on each access.

What I'm not so sure about is the correct solution.  We've been
using RCS for a long time, and our developers have used "rcs -o"
a lot.  This means we have **a lot** of files that can no longer
be checked out with v5.8.

I suppose I could tell our developers to manually edit the
problem files.  It's not very hard, but it makes me nervous,
given the number of files and the potential for error.

What did the RCS developers have in mind?  Is there any
automated tool for file cleanup?  (I've actually written
a simple-minded script to do this, but I'm not sure I
understand the issue well enough to make it bullet proof,
and I don't want to reinvent the wheel.)

-- 
Warren Jones
Fluke Corporation
Software Engineering Support Group