Re: Something like $Id$, $Revision$ or $Date$?

From: Francis Galiegue <fg@one2team.net>
Date: Nov 10, 2008, 15:58 UTC
Message-ID: <200811101658.44366.fg@one2team.net>
In-Reply-To: <871vxjoa3j.fsf@erwin.mina86.com>

Le Monday 10 November 2008 16:48:48 Michal Nazarewicz, vous avez écrit : [...]

>
> The thing is that for some repositories I don't distinguish anything
> like a "release version" of files.

"Git tracks contents, not files".

You have two problems here:
* first, unlike CVS, files don't have revisions;
* second, unline SVN (or even Mercurial), commits are not "ordered", at least 
not in a natural way (can't tell what SHA1 is more recent).

Git will not track a single file, and I don't think it will ever do so. And then, what about renames?

You have two options there:

1. (requires git modification, I guess) put a $last_modified_date$ magic that 
expands to the last modification date;
2. (what I do) keep an internal ChangeLog for such files, that you (have to) 
fill by hand each time.

The second approach has big advantages:
* you can date your changes;
* you _really_ know the file history;
* git's renaming handle allows you to track this ChangeLog over time!

It requires discipline, though...

-- 
fge