Re: [gentoo-dev] $Header:$ and ebuilds

[Kevin F. Quinn]

On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 17:46:18 +0200
Danny van Dyk <kugelfang@g.o> wrote:

> Am Sonntag, 22. April 2007 schrieb Michael Cummings:
> > On Sat, Apr 21, 2007 at 08:47:54AM +0100, Kevin F. Quinn wrote:
> > > I do the same.  The '$Header: $' tells me which version of a file
> > > in the CVS tree I last synced to in my overlay, then I can just do
> > > a cvs diff on the tree to get a patch of differences since then.
> > > Very useful.
> >
> > FWIW, I've used the $Header $ to determine if a person is looking at
> > the latest greatest or needs to synch up first (in particular when I
> > was dealing with an eclass bug). Very useful when dealing with bugs
> > and you need to confirm that the user is completely synch'd up and
> > looking at a current tree or not (because just asking when the last
> > time they synch'd doesn't help).
>
> This can be done using checksum like SHA1 much better, as people can
> edit their ebuilds/eclasses/profiles and forget/lie about it, and
> still have the same $Headers$ line.

In practice I find it's rare that a user has been hacking around in the
eclasses.  All the SHA1 tells you is that it's not the most recent,
but it's not easy to determine from the SHA1 exactly which version they
do have (so it's not enough to determine what's different).

Having said that, the most accurate way to find out what they have is
to get them to attach the eclass and diff it yourself.  However
relying on the SHA1 also means you can't just say things like, "Check
eclass <blah> is version 1.836 (look at the "$Header" line at the top
of the file)."

-- 
Kevin F. Quinn