gnustandards maintain.texi

[Richard M. Stallman]

CVSROOT:        /sources/gnustandards
Module name:    gnustandards
Changes by:     Richard M. Stallman <rms>       17/09/19 18:05:20

Modified files:
        .              : maintain.texi 

Log message:
        (Test Releases): Suggest running build-aux/git-version-gen
        to generate a test release version number.

CVSWeb URLs:
http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/gnustandards/maintain.texi?cvsroot=gnustandards&r1=1.260&r2=1.261

Patches:
Index: maintain.texi
===================================================================
RCS file: /sources/gnustandards/gnustandards/maintain.texi,v
retrieving revision 1.260
retrieving revision 1.261
diff -u -b -r1.260 -r1.261
--- maintain.texi       19 Sep 2017 05:40:51 -0000      1.260
+++ maintain.texi       19 Sep 2017 22:05:19 -0000      1.261
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
 @c For double-sided printing, uncomment:
 @c @setchapternewpage odd
 @c This date is automagically updated when you save this file:
address@hidden lastupdate September 18, 2017
address@hidden lastupdate September 19, 2017
 @c %**end of header
 
 @dircategory GNU organization
@@ -1496,7 +1496,7 @@
 solidly, it is a good idea to do pretest releases before each ``real''
 release.
 
-There are two ways of handling version numbers for pretest versions.
+There are three ways of handling version numbers for pretest versions.
 One method is to treat them as versions preceding the release you are going
 to make.
 
@@ -1507,7 +1507,7 @@
 (You could also use 4.5.100, but 990 has the advantage of sorting in
 the right order.)
 
-The other method is to attach a date to the release number that is
+Another method is to attach a date to the release number that is
 coming.  For a pretest for version 4.6, made on Dec 10, 2002, this
 would be 4.6.20021210.  A second pretest made the same day could be
 4.6.20021210.1.
@@ -1515,6 +1515,14 @@
 For development snapshots that are not formal pretests, using just
 the date without the version numbers is ok too.
 
+A third method, if the package uses Git, is to run the script
address@hidden/git-version-gen} from Gnulib to generate test release
+version numbers.  It generates version numbers in the form
address@hidden@address@hidden@var{commithash}}, where
address@hidden is the latest version tag, @var{commits} is the number
+of commits since that tag, and @var{commithash} is a hash code for the
+latest commit.
+
 One thing that you should never do is to release a pretest with the same
 version number as the planned real release.  Many people will look only
 at the version number (in the tar file name, in the directory name that