Item6034: BuildContrib generates noisy warning if no SVN

When running perl build.pl release it is required that the plugin to be built is in SVN. This is inconsistent with the documentation and also seems not needed. Why do we require a plugin developer to use SVN?

This restriction should be removed.

Note that this restriction is only used to find the version number of the file to substitute. (There is also a history target, but one can avoid running that one.) At a minimum, there should be a test whether the directory is under svn control, and only then perform these operations.

-- TWiki:Main/ThomasWeigert - 30 Sep 2008

I originally developed the BuildContrib to help me maintain my various contributions. I thought I had coded it not to require SVN, but if there is such a constraint it is probably sheer laziness on my part - I develop exclusively under subversion, as I see revision control as a critical part of good software practice. I guess that no non-subversion user has yet felt the need to code around this restriction. If you need it for your environment, go ahead.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 01 Oct 2008

I think it is not a good idea to prevent people from using the BuildContrib just because they use some other revision control system, such as CVS or git. Or no revision control system, for that matter. SVN is required at this point to find the revision number to insert into the code. It would be better to call this function only if SVN is installed, and otherwise not to insert the revision number.

-- ThomasWeigert - 04 Oct 2008

I just checked, and the failure to find subversion does not stop the build; it generates a (load) warning message, but the build continues happily. However I can see how such a message might make you think the build failed, so I'm not rejecting this; instead I have rewritten the headline and dropped priority to low. The error should be trapped and calmed down to avoid giving runners the wrong idea.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 05 Oct 2008