Re: "svn --version" should report revision it was built from on dev (HEAD) builds

On Thu, Jul 15, 2004 at 02:50:46PM +0200, Sven Mueller wrote:
> Just noticed that releases report the revision of the branch they were
> built from, but neither release candidate nor HEAD builds seem to do so.
>
> IMHO, they should.

In the case of RC tarballs I suppose we could include this. However,
our documentation on what we put in that field says we don't. I'm not
sure if there's a reason for that or not.

However, in HEAD builds or any other out of repository build, it is
impossible to give a single revision that it is build against. The
working copy could be a mixed revision working copy. Also in order to
include this we'd have to update it on every build as someone could
update a single file. Which means svn_version.h would be updated and
tons of things depend upon that so you'd end up rebiulding everything.
Ultimately, it would be worthless because it wouldn't be an accurate
reflection of what is in the build because either people would defeat it
or it just wouldn't work. We're far better off leaving it out
so people don't come to believe it is reliable.

The only time we do that is with tags and if someone builds with a mixed
working copy of a tag well they're on their own.

-- 
Ben Reser <ben@reser.org>
http://ben.reser.org
"Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be looking."
- H.L. Mencken
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