[Mapbender-dev] hardwired version number

[Christoph Baudson (WhereGroup)]

On Monday we discussed this at the IRC meeting, citing the protocol

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e) Where to put the version number of Mapbender?

Kicked off by Marko's idea back in September: 
http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/mapbender_dev/2007-September/000685.html

The idea is to have the version number of Mapbender hardwired, so that 
Mapbender "knows" what version it has. There were various ideas
- in mapbender.conf
- a new constants.php file
- a new version.txt file

We still need to work out which solution will be best.

Marko proposed to also store the version number in the database in order 
to check if the database is compatible to the software, which was 
believed to be a sensible idea.

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My idea is to have a new PHP file that contains system constants, maybe 
called system.php. This could be located in "php". The following 
arguments led me to my suggestions:

- a PHP file indicates it is a machine readable file, and not a user 
readable file
- declaring it as a constant (and not storing it in the conf folder) 
will indicate that it's not to be changed
- a javascript variable could easily be derived from that constant
- the php file is extendable for other possible system wide constants

The reason I would advise against a conf file is
- that the version number is not configurable

The reason I would advise against a txt file is
- a txt file would suggest that it is regarded human readable, and not 
machine readable.
- including a txt file in a php file is not good style


Please share your thoughts.

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