Re: Getting the CVS revision of Zsh

[Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>]

Greg Klanderman wrote:
> >>>>> Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> > % echo $ZSH_PATCHLEVEL
> > 1234
> 
> To me, "patchlevel" indicates the patch version of a release, i.e. the
> third number in ZSH_VERSION.

To me a patch is quite clearly a single change for a particular purpose.
I'm not aware of anything that would lead people to suppose it was part
of the version number.  In any case, the fact it's separate here means
it obviously isn't.  However, it's deliberately vague what a "patch"
is.  It means basically nothing more than "the shell changed".

> Something like ZSH_VCSREVISION to me would be a much better name, or
> ZSH_CVSREVISION if you don't care about being version control system
> neutral.

I don't really like variable names to be that geeky and obscure, and if
you're going to be that specific you'd need to call it
ZSH_CVS_CHANGELOG_REVISION.  It's aimed at users sophisticated enough to
know that a "patch" is a single software change, but not necessarily au
fait with revision control, which is an implementation detail.

> The other question I had on this is whether ChangeLog is necessarily
> updated with every checkin to zsh source code?

It's supposed to be, if people are doing the right thing, and I think
they mostly are.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>                  Software Engineer
CSR PLC, Churchill House, Cambridge Business Park, Cowley Road
Cambridge, CB4 0WZ, UK                          Tel: +44 (0)1223 692070