Re: meaning of "Automatic date update in version.in" commits

[Matt Rice <ratmice@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Sep 2017, Matt Rice wrote:
>
>> option A. seems to be using git smudge/filter to on checkout populate
>> the version.in using a smudge rule, and then filtering it out using a
>> filter,
>>               acting much like the RCS keywords...
>>   pros: no extra commit stuff at all
>>   cons: requires setting up git config stuff in the repository for
>> executing the smudge/filter rules on checkout
>>            this should likely be checked by the configure process e.g.
>> configure should produce an error telling the user to enable the
>> smudge/filter rules
>>           when the version is $Date$ rather an actual date...
>
> I don't think there should be anything that requires people to check out
> in a special way, or to configure their checkouts specially, rather than
> just using "git clone" and a subsequent build.  Generic tools such as
> build bots may have generic knowledge of how to check out and update git
> checkouts; they should not need binutils-specific extras to that
> knowledge.

Indeed i was looking at it the other way, in that build bots etc need
binutils-specific knowledge in order to ignore these commits
to avoid unnecessary work, but your point seems valid.