Man pages .Dd

[Ruslan Ermilov]

On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 04:51:54PM +0000, Florent Thoumie wrote:
> Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 03:37:12PM +0300, Gleb Smirnoff wrote:
[...]
> >> Also, when change is merged the .Dd is left from the original
> >> commit to HEAD, not the date of the MFC.
> >>
> > This is true (most of the time ;-).
> 
> Is it true and right?
> 
> Cause I'm always changing .Dd to the date of the MFC.
> 
When MFC is effectively a "copying of changes from branch to
branch", you're not changing a document but are "copying" it,
so the date should also be copied verbatim.  It *sometimes*
happens to commit manpage changes that aren't simply copies;
for example, you need to implement and document something
differently.  In this case, the date should be updated and
not simply copied.

There are more "complicated" cases like the below one, but
fortunately they are VERY rare:

- A manpage in HEAD gets changes 1 and 2 on December 1 and 2,
  respectively.

- On January 1st, you decide to MFC a change #2; the MFCed
  version should have "December 2".

- On January 2nd, you decide to also MFC a change #1; the
  MFCed manpage's date should NOT be updated -- it would
  have to be "updated" to December 1 but the date should
  not go backwards unless it's a bugfix or reversal.

It's easier to think of it as: what would be it if I merged
#1 and #2 in their chronological order?  Or, in the SCM
world: how would I resolve conflicts in this case (yes,
you'd get conflicts if you attempt to do it this way).
Probably the latter is part of the reason people tend
to forget updating the date, I dunno.  :-)


Cheers,
-- 
Ruslan Ermilov
ru at FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD committer
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