Re: deleting rcs keywords from emacs sources

[Nick Roberts <nick@nick.uklinux.net>]

 > Now, if we switched from CVS to Subversion, we could have our cake and
 > eat it too (in Subversion, keywords don't cause spurious
 > conflicts/differences).

Whatever the advantages of Subversion (or Arch), keywords would not appear
to be one of them because the info manual on CVS says:

info>   If you merge files containing keywords (*note Keyword
info> substitution::), you will normally get numerous conflicts during the
info> merge, because the keywords are expanded differently in the revisions
info> which you are merging.

info>   Therefore, you will often want to specify the `-kk' (*note
info> Substitution modes::) switch to the merge command line.  By
info> substituting just the name of the keyword, not the expanded value of
info> that keyword, this option ensures that the revisions which you are
info> merging will be the same as each other, and avoid spurious conflicts.

eg. cvs update -kk -j mybranch

There is a caution:

info>    There is, however, one major caveat with using `-kk' on merges.
info> Namely, it overrides whatever keyword expansion mode CVS would normally
info> have used.  In particular, this is a problem if the mode had been `-kb'
info> for a binary file.  Therefore, if your repository contains binary
info> files, you will need to deal with the conflicts rather than using `-kk'.

The only binary files that I'm aware of in Emacs CVS are the bitmaps for
the toolbar.

Nick