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

[Earnie Boyd]

Quoting Derek Wright <drupal at dwwright.net>:

>
> 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?
>

Derek, thanks for the feedback.

> 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.
>

I agree if the version is specified as a specific version.

> 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.
>

If version is specified in the info file you could:
1) Not output another
2) Replace the specified
3) Output one anyway

I think 2) would be the choice to use.

> 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.
>

Good, so you chose to use option 1) above.  Could an option be included 
to use option 2) above instead?

> 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. ;)
>

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this point. ;p  The ``version = 
CVS'' has more documentational value to a noob that you realize though. 
  There are some noobs, me for example, who checkout from CVS without 
realizing the downside of that.  As a noob I might then go searching 
for version to discover what it meant.

Earnie