Re: deleting rcs keywords from emacs sources

[Andre Spiegel <spiegel@gnu.org>]

On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 03:36, Richard Stallman wrote:

> I asked that question so I can get an idea of how much
> inconvenience it would be for you.

The time I would need to put a timestamp into a file before I send it to
someone is surely negligible.  I assume between 5-10 seconds.  Less than
that if I write myself a clever macro for it.  I'd be doing it between
5-10 times a year, so that's your absolute measure of "inconvenience".

The problem with this approach is that the files would only be stamped
when *I* send them out.  When somebody gets a file through a different
channel, e.g. via Web-CVS, or because somebody else sends it to him, the
file won't have an identification in it.

As a result, I might get bug reports where we unknowingly talk about
different versions of a file.  It might take considerable time to sort
out such a misunderstanding.  This is a more severe kind of
"inconvenience" than the time I would need to make a timestamp manually.

Even if everything goes well, there would now be several different ways
to determine the version of a file: If it's from an Emacs release, use
the ChangeLog and CVS history.  If you're hooked up to CVS, use the CVS
version information.  If you get it via another channel, hope that
somebody put a timestamp into it.

To me, that seems messy and an inconvenience in itself.