Keyword substitution – good or bad?

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 […]

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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?”

  1. Chodinski, Projekt6 Avatar
    Chodinski, Projekt6

    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.