[dmd-internals] dmd-devel version number

[Walter Bright]

On 2/8/2013 3:34 AM, Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> Walter Bright, el  8 de February a las 03:03 me escribiste:
>> On 2/8/2013 2:19 AM, Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>>> Leandro Lucarella, el  7 de February a las 13:49 me escribiste:
>>>> Walter Bright, el  6 de February a las 21:52 me escribiste:
>>>>> On 2/6/2013 3:12 PM, Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>>>>>> May I ask what other uses do you have in mind for VERSION? Do you
>>>>>> think they could not benefit too from having a more accurate
>>>>>> version (or even that it will have a negative impact)?
>>>>> I have several makefiles and install files that take the version
>>>>> number as an argument - it's been a giant error-prone pain to do
>>>>> this, and Andrei suggested a single VERSION file to take its place.
>>>> And you use these only when releasing or in your daily routine too?
>>> Since betas are starting to flowing, it will be a good oportunity to do
>>> this. So any input for me to know how to do it in a way that it works
>>> for everyone would be appreciated. Or is there no interest at all on
>>> having a proper version information in the binary...
>> If you only want it in the binary, then put it in a .h file.  VERSION
>> is used for other things as well as generating binaries - that's the
>> whole point of it. It's not scriptable if I have to do it by hand each
>> time.
> I think it would be good to be anywhere else where a version string is
> used, but even then I wasn't planning to put it in the VERSION file,
> I suggested to use the VERSION file to indicate if the extra git hash
> should be specified, by adding the -devel suffix. When you want to make
> a release and remove the extra development version information, just
> remove the suffix from the VERSION file.
>
> If you want to keep the VERSION file without the -devel suffix always,
> I can come up with a different way to do it (a header file doesn't seems
> like a good idea because this information is not static, is taken from
> the output of a git command). I could add a Make variable to append this
> information and you can do something like make RELEASE=1 to build
> a release binary.
>
> I think the way to go is to completely get rid of any VERSION file and
> use git to set version numbers through tags, but one step at the time ;)
>

VERSION drives git, not the other way around!