Re: [groff] I hate git-version-gen

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Werner,

Werner LEMBERG wrote on Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 03:44:34AM +0100:

>   echo 1.22.4 > .tarball-version                   <---

That does indeed work, thanks.

My spontaneous reaction went like "any sufficiently complicated
technology is undistinguishable from magic", but reading the hack
gnulib/build-aux/git-version-gen, it is actually understandable,
it does about the same as my patch to configure.ac, only more
indirectly: completely neuter the script.

So it seems we can have both worlds:  People who want detailed
non-release-version information scattered into 188 files (and two
directory names) use the script, and people who want to focus on
testing whether everything in the upcoming release in its final
state is likely to work together as expected can do so as well.  :-)


>> I doubt that nowadays, anybody still uses the native build system to
>> install self-compiled software directly into the operating system,

> I do this all the time.

O really?  Surprising.  Everybody else i talked to about such things
during the last years said they don't do it because of the risk of
polluting their system with ill-installed or left-over files.  Well,
what can i say, i seem to stand corrected in that respect.

Yours,
  Ingo