Re: RCS keyword expansion

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Oct 12, 2007, 17:44 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.0.999.0710121041220.6887@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <m3y7e8jmbm.fsf@barry_fishman.acm.org>

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007, Barry Fishman wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> 
> I changed my editor (Emacs) to convert RCS Ids to timestamps when I
> opened a file for reading.  This would fix old files.  When i wrote out
> files I would update the timestamp before writing them (via emacs's
> timestamp package).  I didn't have to think about it as my RCS Id
> stamped files slowly evolve into my editor stamped ones.  I'm sure I
> could do something similar in VIM, or with a script encapsulating
> another editor.

I think it might also be potentially interesting to make this just be a pre-commit hook - although your point that doing it in the editor is to some degree even nicer, because it also means that it shows up in diffs even *before* you commit.

But if you want to explore the pre-commit hook approach, what it would basically boild down to is that at that point you have a list of all files that have changed, and then you could run some script on them to change them even further.

I'm sure you'd find some problems with the approach, and I think it absolutely sucks for merging (ie trivially you'll have all the merge problems people *always* have with RCS Id's, and now you need to teach the auto-merger to hide them from you), but it's probably better than trying to do it at some "core level" (which screws up things like switching branches etc).

			Linus