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The $Log$
keyword is somewhat
controversial. As long as you are working on your
development system the information is easily accessible
even if you do not use the $Log$
keyword—just do a cvs log
. Once you export
the file the history information might be useless
anyhow.
A more serious concern is that CVS is not good at
handling $Log$
entries when a branch is
merged onto the main trunk. Conflicts often result
from the merging operation.
People also tend to "fix" the log entries in the file
(correcting spelling mistakes and maybe even factual
errors). If that is done the information from
cvs log
will not be consistent with the
information inside the file. This may or may not be a
problem in real life.
It has been suggested that the $Log$
keyword should be inserted last in the file, and
not in the files header, if it is to be used at all.
That way the long list of change messages will not
interfere with everyday source file browsing.