Keyword Expansion and Merging Branches

[Bill Reynolds]

We've run into spurious conflicts when merging branches. Files that
have keywords (eg $Id$) in them lead to conflicts because the two
files have different values for the keywords, and cvs can't recognize
that the keywords are special. Looking in the cvs TODO, we found:

        185.  A frequent complaint is that keyword expansion causes conflicts
        when merging from one branch to another.  .....

Reading the source revealed the following line in src/update.c,
function join_file():

#if 0
    if (*t_options == '\0')
        t_options = "-kk";              /* to ignore keyword expansions */
#endif

our experiments had shown that the -kk option had made the conflicts
go away, but led to the unfortunate side effect of having a sticky
disabling of keyword expansion. Further, sophisticated options like
this are not readily available from graphical clients such as WinCVS.
Enabling the above code and recompiling solved the problem, and does
not seem to leed to sticky keyword problems.

My question: Why is this code disabled? What are the consequences of
enabling it?

Thanks.
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Bill Reynolds                (505)-292-3556 (Voice)
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