PVCS/Headstart revision substitution not working

Question

We've been following the instructions on p95 of the Headstart documentation, using a string of $Revision::xxxxxxxxxxx$ to get PVCS revision number substitution on our modules. This doesn't seem to be working correctly - sometimes the substitution takes place, sometimes it doesn't (in standard text files, not binary). We're using PVCS V6.5.
There's nothing in the PVCS documentation to suggest that a revision string of anything except $Revision$ will work. Why does the Headstart documentation state otherwise? Does it refer to functionality that used to be available at an earlier release of PVCS? It also seems to be saying that using this string will prevent the corruption of binary files - the PVCS documentation clearly states that keyword substitution should never be used with binary, as corruption may result.

Answer 1

Cheryl,
I am not sure what you mean by sometimes the substitution takes places and sometimes it doesn't. The expansion of a keyword is depended of a setting in your configuration file (see file type tab on configure tab).
You can enable/disable the expansion per file type extension (even using a wild card).
Normally once you have enabled it for a fmb it should work for all fmb's. However it may not work for already checked-in fmb's: if you add a keyword later on it may not expand. You can use wild card here (undefined) but it takes a specific file type extention first. You have disabled it for fmb and enabled it for (undefined) then it will not expand.
Please let us know if this solves your problem: verifying the keyword enabling/disabling per file type.
In addition you mentioned the disrecommendation of PVCS/VM to use keywords in binary files. Expansion in binary files with the fixed lenght, as you do, has always worked in previous releases. It still works in 6.5 and 6.6 but pvcs/vm no longer supports it officially, what can I say?
k r the Headstart team