[sane-devel] Version numbering (was Re: Fix PPA build)

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Hi Rolf,

Thanks for chiming in.

Rolf Bensch writes:

> Hi All,
>
> After reactivating my Ubuntu ppa it uses for the recent version
> 1.0.26~ppa[date].
>
> OK, this breaks the old version from last July (1.0.26+git[date]), but I
> communicated 2 instructions how the users can jump onto the new versions.
>
> Don't worry about the Ubuntu distribution versions. They're still using
> 1.0.25+git20150528.

There more to the world than Ubuntu, we live in a multiverse ;-P

> Using 'git describe' is an good idea. But please don't forget that we
> must be able to compile the tarballs provided from sane's website and
> alioth *without* installed git packages or with the correct version.

Don't worry, I'm aware of that.  I was thinking along the lines of
replacing the version number in configure{,.ac} with the "massaged"
output of `git describe` for the tarballs.  I vaguely remember there
being a macro in gnulib that may help with this.  But I'll do some more
research before implementing this.

No-one should be needing git or any of the autotools to build from our
source tarballs.

> A header file (e.g. git-describe.h) could be a solution, which holds the
> git version and has been created before creating the tarballs. If we're
> compiling against a git repository, this file can be rewritten from
> 'make' and must be excluded from the git repository.

That would only work for source code.  There are other places where we
may want to use version information, documentation for example.

> Hope this helps.

Yup, and I hope this helps too,
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
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