Re: Weird shallow-tree conversion state, and branches of shallow trees

From: Andy Parkins <andyparkins@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 16, 2007, 09:10 UTC
Message-ID: <200704161010.47059.andyparkins@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <17954.48933.484379.593657@lisa.zopyra.com>

On Monday 2007 April 16 01:11, Bill Lear wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Not that Linus needs any back-up from me, but I second this, very
> strongly.  Decorating source code with release information is a proper
> function of release management tools, not the SCM system.  We had a
> similar argument in our company about this, sparked by a criticism of
> git for not having keyword (version number) substitution, and I argued
> that having such substitution functions in the SCM was out-of-place
> and a crutch for weak release procedures.  It's easy with a proper
> make system to put whatever information you want from the SCM into the
> release product.

I'm not disagreeing with any of this - there are certainly cases when expansion is completely the wrong tool. That doesn't mean there are no cases where it would be useful.

The case I keep banging on about is that where nothing is made and this is not a release. I don't want to make a release, I just want to print out the current version of a file and have something that appears on the printout that would allow me to identify what version of the file that printout was from. Are you seriously suggesting I should run release scripts just for that?

It's not something you want - fine - not a problem for me that you wouldn't use it. The thing that is bothering me is that everyone keeps waving their hands while chanting "keyword expansion evil", while not giving an example of what problem it causes. By this I mean "problem for the end user", not "problem in writing the support" - if it's impractical to implement then that's fine, say that.

Andy

-- 
Dr Andy Parkins, M Eng (hons), MIET
andyparkins@gmail.com