Re: deleting rcs keywords from emacs sources

[David Kastrup]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     The user doesn't have CVS access, my fix is not readily
>     backported into the version of the file he has, so I send him
>     the entire current source file.  Later, that person has another
>     problem, and reports it along with the version number of the
>     file I sent him.  Without version numbers in the files, this is
>     very difficult, if not impossible to keep track of.
> 
> I can follow how this is useful for you.  I would guess that only a
> few Lisp file maintainers do this, though.

FWIW, AUCTeX uses RCS tags to announce the version number used
(either released version or CVS revision and build date) in bug
reports sent by the standard bug reporting commands.  Since we don't
release that often, this information helps quite a lot in tracking
what code base the bug report refers to.

> If you put a date manually into the files when you send an entire
> file to someone, it would achieve the same purpose, right?  You'd be
> doing it manually instead of automatically.

If somebody checks out and compiles my CVS archive, I won't be in the
position of putting dates into his files manually.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum