Re: The hated $Log$ keyword

[Eric Siegerman]

On , July 7, 2001 at 18:22:09 (+0100), James Youngman wrote:
> Subject: Re: The hated $Log$ keyword
>
> What if there was a keyword like $Log$ but which expanded to the
> entire log history (with comment leaders)?   This would avoid the
> merge problem and surely cannot be too expensive to compute.

It would indeed avoid the merge problem (or at least reduce it)
... but it's *impossible* to compute in the presence of branches.
CVS doesn't keep around enough info to know which revisions of
which branches actually contributed to the rev in question.
(That's a problem that wants solving for other reasons, of
course, as has been discussed in the past.)

On Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 05:49:30PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> RCS keywords are evilly implemented at best, and $Header, $Log, and a
> few similar are just totally evil from the get go.  Avoid them like the
> plague.

I thoroughly agree about $Log$, but:
  - what's evil about the rest?
  - why do you put $Header$ in the "totally evil" class, not
    merely evil?

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        address@hidden
|  |  /
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not
necessarily a good idea.
        - RFC 1925 (quoting an unnamed source)