6. CVS Id: Marker Check

What

Presence of a Id CVS / RCS identity marker is checked, e.g.

            Id myfile.ycp,v 1.2 2001/02/14 18:04:50 sh Exp 
	

Why

This CVS / RCS ID is the only way of finding out exactly what CVS revision the file has and what change date. The file date (what ls -l shows) is absolutely unreliable and irrelevant: This may have changed just by copying the file around which didn't change anything.

This is important for bug tracking and for finding and fixing bugs - only when a developer knows what version of a file has been used he has a chance to reproduce a bug - or even make sure that a supposedly fixed bug didn't turn up again.

How

Presence of

Id:
	

is checked. There may be more characters before the closing dollar sign "$", but the exact contents is not checked.

[Note]Note

When creating a new file, it is absolutely sufficient to include the unexpanded string ("Id:") somewhere in the file. CVS or RCS will automatically expand this to the full ID string.