Re: Canonical Comments

From:

Lew <lew@lewscanon.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:17:11 -0700 (PDT)

Message-ID:

<6a34a0a4-2a48-4f39-bb9e-105e308eff67@t10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com>

Martin Gregorie wrote:

On > The file version history entered into a VCS is the history. Whether =

its

correct is another matter and the responsibility of whoever commits it,
no matter where its stored, which might be just the VCS audit trail or an
additional copy in the file as well. Here I'd agree with the other poster
who pointed out that sources are frequently distributed as tarballs: in
this having the version history in the file can be rather useful provided
its accurate and correct.

I find it less than useless myself. What do I care that braces were
added to the third 'if' clause on Jan. 12 of 2003?

As a client of a class, I care about the correctness today, not what
changes were made a few days, weeks, months or years ago to get it
that way. I care about the Javadocs. Unless I'm actively working on
changing the source, in which case I had *better* be using the source-
code repository myself, the change history is dilatory.

Systems like the ICL ADDS held project version details outside any of the
component file version details. This is what I meant, not that project
version details would get into component files.

This suggestion makes good sense. I am in favor of keeping history in
separate files for those times when you need it. Project history is
much more useful than individual artifact history to anyone not
directly involved in coding the artifacts.

--
Lew