Variables in Yum repo files

I've been using SmartPM for some time on CentOS machines and in the SmartPM
mailing list we have a conversation that's not hot but a bit
warm about whether we should add support for variable names in the Smart
config file.  It really come down to "That's the way Yum does it so
we should do it too" on one side to "not all decisions are smart ones" on
the opposing side.

So I'm here to find out what the advantage of having a line like this

baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/$releasever/centosplus/$basearch/

As apposed to having it like this.

baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/centosplus/i386/

and just update the file (/etc/yum.repos.d/repofile.repo) if the repository
or the version/arch changes?

This isn't flame bait as I'm arguing the side of having variables but others
have put up a really good defense on the "They're not necessary" side
of things.

So I'm asking how are these set and does YUM use them just because that's
the way it's always done it or is there
a really strong case for them?

Thanks,
Grant

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