I’ve worked on “check out” code bases very similar to this. I mean. Nothing so insane as scripts patching class files in to jars Willy nilly, but it seems the “just check out a file so nobody else can work on it” thing is a “common” “solution” to this.
I am interested in how you managed it when someone had to hold code for years (as I’ve seen)? Basically, we also had a way to share control with one other person, and the person who was taking the second source were responsible for updating both versions at the same time manually (which never happened, so implementing a large project that touched hundreds of source files had to dedicate a couple weeks to manually hand comparing files, manually implementing the changes, and then manually retesting)
I am interested in how you managed it when someone had to hold code for years (as I’ve seen)? Basically, we also had a way to share control with one other person, and the person who was taking the second source were responsible for updating both versions at the same time manually (which never happened, so implementing a large project that touched hundreds of source files had to dedicate a couple weeks to manually hand comparing files, manually implementing the changes, and then manually retesting)