I have a problem: I want to do Subversion Keyword substitution on Office Documents. But enabling it breaks them (of course!). When I was scanning the web for solutions, I encountered this Blog Entry arguing against keyword substitution in the first place.
I don’t agree: While the author is right that this can be a nuciance when processing diffs and having to redo builds, there are many cases where it can be really useful: Specifically, as soon as a file leaves the context of repository it becomes really valuable. If you email a file, for instance.
Bottom line: Keyword substitution shouldn’t be enabled by default on the whole repository. But if enabled selectively, following a good policy, it’s a useful feature in the toolbox.
Comments
One response to “Keyword substitution – good or bad?”
Keyword substitution does not break Office documents if double-colon notation is used.
Example : $Revision:: $
Just add enough space for filling the values after the double-colon.