[PATCH WITHDRAWN] Re: [FYI] maint: delete '$scriptversion' from all our scripts

[Stefano Lattarini]

On 12/28/2012 10:50 PM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> The presence of those variables was causing annoying merge conflicts
> with long-lived and often-rebased personal branches of mine.
> 
> It is worth noting that this change, simple as it is, might still be
> seen as somewhat controversial.  As highlighted in this older thread:
> 
>   http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake-patches/2012-02/msg00037.html
> 
> it is true that keeping explicit '$scriptversion' definitions has some
> advantages, and that a more "correct and complete" solution of my issue
> would involve writing a new git merge driver able to automatically handle
> conflicts in '$scriptversion' definitions.  But I have no inclination of
> writing and maintaining such a driver myself, and I (selfishly?) believe
> that my personal convenience outweighs the advantages described in that
> thread.  So I'm proceeding with this change.  I might still revert it at
> a later date, if the outcry against it is loud enough *and* if someone
> is ready to write a proper git merge driver.
> 
Alas, all the affected scripts also have a '--version' option, which use
the '$scriptversion' variable.  So I fear my so-desired removal of this
variable is again more controversial than I thought, and this patch cannot
be committed as-is.

Maybe I might re-implement this change by having the $scriptversion be the
same as the ${VERSION} from 'configure.ac'.  But that would require a new
syntax check (to avoid introducing unwarranted inconsistencies), as well
as more automation in the bumping of ${VERSION} (to avoid introducing yet
more clerical work).  Not sure whether that is still worth it.  Will see.
For the moment, consider this patch withdrawn.

Sorry for the noise,
  Stefano