[OpenLayers-Dev] including the version number *in* the header comments of OpenLayers.js file

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Sat, May 03, 2008 at 09:51:06PM -0400, John R. Frank wrote:
> > > Is there a reason not to include the version number *in* the header
> > > comments of the OpenLayers.js file served from
> > > http://www.openlayers.org/api/OpenLayers.org ?
> >
> > Is there a reason to include it? There are technical reasons to not do
> > so (it would need a possibly error-prone sed script), and I don't know
> > what it gains...
> 
> When someone copies the file named "OpenLayers.js" and a dir called "img/"
> into some project, it currently has no version number visible. 

OpenLayers.VERSION_NUMBER is in the file, and accessible in Javascript
for that reason: this means that when I'm debugging a page, I don't even
have to bother reading the file to get the version, I just open Firebug
and type "OpenLayers.VERSION_NUMBER" in. In general, I know that I find
that way simpler than opening another webpage and looking through it for
a version.

> Does it really have to be a sed script?  Things like the copyright date
> surely aren't done by a sed script :)

... Yes they are? Updating copyright dates is a sed script that I run at
about 3am on New Years Day (r5614), specifically:

  find . -name \*.js | xargs sed -e 's/2006-2007/2006-2008/'

But it's not run at release time, it's run once a year, which is the
difference. 

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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