4 Preparing the Code for Revision Control

We use Subversion for revision control (see [7]). Subversion can be set up to substitute keywords in the source files with information to identify the version, author, date, etc. of the file. We use some of these keywords in our code. The advantage with this is that files can be identified even if they are exported from the development environment.

Minimally all implementation modules should begin with a comment line

// $Id$

that is expanded by a properly set up Subversion environment to

// $Id: c++_coding_guidelines.tex 46 2008-08-19 13:33:30Z jari $

whereas for header files the comment line should be placed after the #ifndef/#define construct as

#ifndef symbol
#define symbol
// $Id: c++_coding_guidelines.tex 46 2008-08-19 13:33:30Z jari $
<the complete body of the header file>
#endif