I want to have my PHP application labeled with the revision number which it uses, but I don't want to use CruiseControl or update a file and upload it every time. How should I do it?
SVN keywords is not a good solution. As others pointed out adding $Revision$ in a file only affects the specific file, which may not change for a long time.
Remembering to "edit" a file (by adding or removing a blank line) before every commit is pointless. You could as well just type the revision by hand.
One good way to do it (that I know of) is to have an automated deployment process (which is always a good thing) and using the command svnversion. Here is what I do:
Wherever I need the revision I do an include: <?php include 'version.php'; ?>. This "version.php" file only has the revision number. Moreover it is not part of the repository (it set to be ignored). Here is how I create it:
1) On projects where SVN is installed on the server, I also use it for deployment. Getting the latest version to the server I have a script that among other things does the following (it runs on the server):
cd /var/www/project
svn update
rm version.php
svnversion > version.php
2) On projects where SVN is not installed my deployment script is more complex: it creates the version.php file locally, zips the code, uploads and extracts it