Re: Feature request (with patch)

[Klaus T. Aehlig]

Hi,

I completely agree with Karl. The strength of comma-v files is,
that they are widely used, well beyond the gnu rcs project. So...

>     reaction is to regretfully point out that the comma-v syntax is frozen

...the syntax shouldn't be considered a property owned by gnu rcs;
instead we should follow the basic principle of interoperability and
be strict in what we procude (i.e. "Gnu rcs will not add any newphrases
not previously in the file"), but generous in what we accept. And the
latter means to ignore and reproduce any newphrases (using lingo from
the 2009 rcsfile(5) manpage; i.e., any 'id string ;' sequence added
either to of the admin/delta/deltatext block).

We had changes in the past, like the commit-id, that cvs handled well
by this principle. We'll probably have changes in the future (signatures
for commits, ...), so why not follow that principle. As Karl said...

> If a ,v file has extra information, and GNU RCS simply preserves it,
> that's not going to hurt any existing use of RCS -- no one else would
> even know about it.

...it doesn't hurt anyone.

Best regards,
Klaus