[Rd] Wishlist: optional svn-revision number tag in package DESCRIPTION file

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 31 March 2009 at 12:58, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
| On 3/31/2009 10:41 AM, Peter Ruckdeschel wrote:
| > Could we have one (or maybe more) standardized optional tag(s)
| > for package DESCRIPTION files to cover svn revision info?
| > This would be very useful for bug reporting...

Indeed. I am doing something similar with local packages at work.

| > I know that any developer is already free to append corresponding lines
| > to DESCRIPTION files to do something of this sort --- e.g. lines like
| > 
| > LastChangedDate: {$LastChangedDate: 2009-03-31 $}
| > LastChangedRevision: {$LastChangedRevision: 447 $}
| 
| That will give you the last change to the DESCRIPTION file, not the last 
| change to the package, so it could be misleading.  Last time I looked, 
| there wasn't a way in svn to auto update a file that wasn't involved in 
| a changeset.  (You could put something into your build script to call 
| svnversion, but I don't know anything simpler.)

Yes, I have been using configure for that (which can be really any type of
executable script rather than something from autoconf). One can then either
update a placeholder in DESCRIPTION.in to substitute the revision number
and/or create a package-local function reporting svn revision, build time,
etc.  

It may make sense to think about a more general scheme. A common problem is
of course once again portability and the set of required tools.

Dirk

-- 
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