* Eric Blake wrote on Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 02:24:53PM CEST: > According to Bruno Haible on 7/21/2008 5:05 PM: > > > > A) Reduce your expectations, and accept that modified programs show the same > > version number as the unmodified programs. Like it was for the last 20 > > years. When users want to test a modification in a > > "modify-compile-install- > > test" cycle, they are not interested in the output of the --version > > option. > > Which is exactly what GNUmakefile currently does - the version string is > stale during development, and only updated at interesting moments (and > with recent changes, you can use cfg.mk to define which moments are > interesting in your development cycle).
Except that GNUmakefile's way of doing it is such an, err, leaky abstraction. Since its incantation, it needed several iterations, and I think everyone even agrees that it's far from perfect still (and probably not bug-free either). > > B) Change the build process of your package so that a change in the version > > number results in less recompilations. That means, in particular: > > *Don't* use VERSION and PACKAGE_VERSION any more. > > Yes, that is the direction that I think we should eventually reach, but it > takes coordination between the autotools, as well as a design that > everyone is happy with. Not as far as I see. There are very simple solutions that need no coordination with autotools at all. Cheers, Ralf
