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

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

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