Tested with CVS, Mercurial, Subversion and Bazaar on existing repositories I have access to. There is no difference in behavior with or without $/=''. The generated file looks the same.
Unfortunately, I have no Darcs repository to test with and I am not sure if generating a trivial one is enough for the test.
One interesting observation though: If the tool for the repository type is not installed, the VCSVERSION_DATE string simply looks like this:
#define VCSVERSION_DATE ": "
Tested with CVS, Mercurial, Subversion and Bazaar on existing repositories I have access to. There is no difference in behavior with or without $/=''. The generated file looks the same.
Unfortunately, I have no Darcs repository to test with and I am not sure if generating a trivial one is enough for the test.
One interesting observation though: If the tool for the repository type is not installed, the VCSVERSION_DATE string simply looks like this:
#define VCSVERSION_DATE ": "