[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Print updated lib version numbers on commit logs

[Aurelien Jacobs]

On Mon, 1 Sep 2008 09:56:06 +0200
Stefano Sabatini <stefano.sabatini-lala at poste.it> wrote:

> On date Sunday 2008-08-31 23:36:17 +0100, M?ns Rullg?rd encoded:
> > Stefano Sabatini <stefano.sabatini-lala at poste.it> writes:
> [...]
> > > BTW, I experienced that is currently quite hard to understand simply
> > > reading the log which are the versions where some feature was
> > > introduced, this usually require a painful search through the cvslog
> > > archive.
> > >
> > > I propose so to implement an SVN hook to add automatically to the log
> > > the version number for each library updated by a commit.
> > 
> > This is easy to find with normal svn commands.  All you need to do is
> > look at the header file of interest in the same revision.  That's the
> > beauty of tree-wide revision numbers.
> 
> This should be possible to do with scripting, nonetheless I think that
> having that numbers in the log would simplify things for the user.
> 
> Use case: suppose a user writes an application, since is using a
> recently added functions she wants to setup its configure script so
> that it will *require* to use a version not less than of the version
> which added that feature.
> 
> Now she has to grok the log, possibly grepping for the function/field
> which has been added, and when she detects the relevant revision she
> can for example check the diff for that revision.
> 
> The problem is that it isn't always obvious from the log which is the
> functionality added, and often even if a functionality has been added.
> 
> Having the updated library versions in the log would help in two ways: 
> 1) the user would spot immediately which are the changes which added
>  functionality to the library
> 2) the user would find immediately in the log the version number, no
>  need to perform other steps

Ever heard of svn annotate ?
eg: you want to know which minimal version you need to be able to
use AVChapter. Have a look at the line defining AVChapter in the
annotate of the corresponding file:
http://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk/libavformat/avformat.h?view=annotate
The line reads:
435 : 	aurel 	13240 	typedef struct AVChapter {
Now r13240 seems interesting, so just click on it and you will see
the diff of this revision, which introduce AVChapter and changes
the version number.
In some cases, when the line was changed since it was introduced,
you may need to iterate several times with annotate on the
preceding versions, but that would rarely be more than 2 or 3
iterations.
Overall, this is very fast and simple.
I doubt that your proposition would make this any simpler...

Aurel