Re: Wins1.2 tag problems - Why not allow period?

[Paul Braman]

"Chris Cameron" <address@hidden> wrote in message news:<address@hidden>...

> I investigated this same issue a year or two ago.  I can't remember all the
> details, but it is to do with the way that tags and revisions are detected.
> The . is a revision separator and there were potential "gotcha's" with using
> a . in a tag as well.  It took me a while to get straight in my head why
> this was a BAD IDEA, but eventually came to the conclusion that it was.
> There may well have been a discussion here about this issue if you search
> the archives.

Most of the historical (hysterical?) reasons I was aware of was
because CVS *used* RCS to maintain it's archives.  Now that the RCS
functionality is built directly into CVS we have carte blanche to
change it.  (Don't we?)

I mean really, how hard would it be to make the system perform the
following logic:

    while (symbollic name)
        if (first character is digit)
            perform special logic on revision where dot is special
        else
            perform generic logic on tag where dot is not special

Yeah, there are some people that want to use goofy tags like
".MH.blah.2.3" or similar, but the above logic seems pretty concise to
me.

I'm just really tired of not being able to tag release 1.2 with, ummm,
"release-1.2".  What really irks me is that someone out there is
*trying* to make dots in tags special and take away all last hope of
ever changing it.  Stop it!  :)


Paul Braman
address@hidden