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

Joseph Myers
2017-09-21T17:17:25Z

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.

--
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com