[development] version = "$Name$" considered harmful in .info files

[Derek Wright]

On Jun 19, 2007, at 7:14 AM, Earnie Boyd wrote:

> What are the reprecussions to having a version string in the info  
> file?  I don't understand the CON of specifying the version  
> string.  If I specify ``version = CVS'' what is wrong with that?

1) Sooner or later, whatever you check in yourself will become stale  
and wrong (since you'll forget to update it to reflect reality).  No  
information is better than wrong information, especially since we  
have good tools to figure out the correct information automatically  
if it's not there.

2) It's potentially confusing for the vast majority of Drupal people  
who download packages, since "version" will be defined twice in  
the .info files.

3) You'll break the cvs_deploy module's logic in the one case it's  
necessary: when people deploy from CVS. ;)  If there's data in  
the .info file, cvs_deploy goes with that.  If you put in something  
bogus like "CVS" in there, it won't attempt to figure out what you  
really have instead, since it assumes you must have put your local  
modification there for a reason.

4) "CVS" is the name of a version control system and a pharmacy.  It  
is not, and has never been, a reasonable name of a specific version  
of a piece of software. ;)

...

-Derek