Re: RCS Keywords - Why not "Description" ?

[Aaron S. Hawley]

Hello Eric,

> Is there any chance that someone could add
>
>     "Description"
>
> as a KEYWORD, which would then populate the program header if RCS detects the 
> string '$Description: $, in the same fashion as the '$Log: $' string ?
>
> [...]
>
> Having the "Description" string as a keyword for reporting that in the source 
> file after check-in, and to be able to parse for that with awk during 
> external function calls for refefence or lookup, would be very useful, as 
> well as for the automatic generation of a web page providing a guide to 
> programs available and their function (report the Description).

It sounds like you want to use information stored in the "Description"
keyword in RCS to drive a documentation system.  That seems orthogonal
to the purpose of RCS.  I'm not aware of other version control
software doing this.

Most programming languages can support documentation in the source
file in comments and have tools for parsing and generating the
documentation from that text.   These tools are often focused on
documenting a library written in the language and don't do a good job
of documenting a software package at a high-level, so I can understand
them not being generally useful.  However, they do come with the
benefit of generating documentation as Web pages.

> I am too used to RCS and have no desire to learn any of the alternates like 
> git, cvs, sourceforge, etc.  Thank you.

There's no shame in using RCS for personal projects.