Re: dabbrev-select-buffers-function's help unhelpful

[Eli Zaretskii]

On 3 May 2001, Dan Jacobson wrote:

> >> By the way, looking at
> >> ;;; dabbrev.el --- dynamic abbreviation package
> >> 
> >> ;; Copyright (C) 1985, 86, 92, 94, 96, 1997 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> >> 
> >> ;; Author: Don Morrison
> >> ;; Maintainer: Lars Lindberg <Lars.Lindberg@sypro.cap.se>
> >> ;; Created: 16 Mars 1992
> >> ;; Lindberg's last update version: 5.7
> >> 
> >> one feels unsure about the date of last change.
> 
> Eli> The last year in the Copyright line tells that.  If you want a more
> Eli> accurate idea, look in the lisp/ChangeLog file.
> 
> Seems kind of bug prone from a software maintenance standpoint.

The Emacs maintenance is not based on any of these.  We use CVS, so
whenever we want to know who changed a file and when, we do a simple
"cvs log".

> Ok, if the
> changelog says on Thu May  3 03:41:39 CST 2001 Bob "Improved the
> search function retracker sequence to not xxx on situation yyy", I
> would still need 1/2 hour to analyze which of two similar search.el
> files is the one with the improvement unless the appropriate comments
> have been added to clue me in.

This situation shouldn't happen with packages bundled with Emacs.  All
you need is to compare Emacs versions: the later one holds the
``improved'' version of any particular .el file.

With packages that aren't bundled, it is up to the package maintainer
to include version information to help you with these decisions.

> So I vote for version control stings
> right in the file, which I hear is what you will do in emacs 21 I hope.

No, Emacs 21 doesn't change this in any way.