[crossfire] SVN notes/thoughts

[Nicolas Weeger (Laposte)]

>   One point is automatically rebuilding the archetypes when the arch tree
> changes.
>
>   My thought here is that lib/Makefile can run svnversion and puts that in
> a state file (.collect.svn.new).  Then, the process compares that file with
> the old one (.collect.svn) - if different, it runs the collect and moves
> the file over.  If the same, it just doesn't do anything.
>
>   In this way, a collect would automatically be done whenever the
> archetypes are updated.

Sounds like a good idea to me, if possible :)

>   I think similar logic could also be used to embed the version number into
> the client and server binaries.  That way, when someone reports a bug, it
> is very clear what version they are running.  By using a state file, it
> means we don't need to recompile and relink everytime (if we just used
> svnversion to blindly write a .c/.h file, then everytime it would recompile
> and relink that component).

Agreed, having the exact revision number would be really nice to see the exact 
issue.

>   In both of these cases, we also need to handle the case for the official
> releases, where there will not be any SVN information in the downloaded
> source code, and the user may not even have svn tools installed.

Well, that's what tags/branches are for, i guess :)

>   In the case of lacking the svn data itself, I'd think the makefiles could
> just check for .svn files - I'd rather not have to reconstruct the
> makefiles for the official versions.  In terms of the version string, I
> think the file that inclues it would have to be part of the distributed
> version so that it is there for the compiled in.  Including the SVN version
> in officially released distributions shouldn't cause any problems IMO.

No issue for me either.

Nicolas