Re: FYI: new inter-release version strings, e.g., 6.9-219-g58ddd,

[Jim Meyering]

Jim Meyering <address@hidden> wrote:

> "Dmitry V. Levin" <address@hidden> wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 05:50:31PM +0200, Jim Meyering wrote:
>>> For example, now when I run "make dist", rather than getting the always
>>> identically-named coreutils-6.9+.tar.gz, I get tarballs with more
>>> meaningful names:
>>>
>>>     coreutils-6.9.220.gdd469.tar.gz
>>>     coreutils-6.9.223.g624d1.tar.gz
>>>
>>> Similarly, --version output reflects the snapshot:
>>>
>>>     $ src/cat --version| head -1
>>>     cat (GNU coreutils) 6.9.223.g624d1
>>
>> Since "g" is common prefix produced by git describe, maybe it could be
>> omitted?  Also, maybe 4 hexdigits is enough to distinguish snapshots?
>> E.g. 6.9.223.624d instead of 6.9.223.g624d1.
>
> Removing the "g" sounds good -- one byte shorter.
> Though it seems silly to have to manually truncate to length 4 the
> string I already requested be truncated to 4 with
> "git-describe --abbrev=4 HEAD".  I wondered if that was somehow
> deliberate, or a bug but haven't investigated.

git does that deliberately, to make the string _globally_ unambiguous.
Since coreutils has over 24K change sets, it's not surprising
that it'd need a longer prefix some of the time:

    $ for i in $(seq 20); do git-describe --abbrev=4 HEAD~$i; done
    COREUTILS-6_9-222-gbfe49
    COREUTILS-6_9-221-g8138
    COREUTILS-6_9-220-g4b11f2
    COREUTILS-6_9-219-g58ddd
    COREUTILS-6_9-218-g357554
    COREUTILS-6_9-217-gadfc
    COREUTILS-6_9-216-gd6d5
    COREUTILS-6_9-215-gc370a
    COREUTILS-6_9-214-gcbdbb
    COREUTILS-6_9-213-g505eee
    COREUTILS-6_9-212-gddb02
    COREUTILS-6_9-211-ga2f76
    COREUTILS-6_9-210-geea7d8
    COREUTILS-6_9-209-g6e3e8
    COREUTILS-6_9-208-gec06
    COREUTILS-6_9-207-gee8470
    COREUTILS-6_9-206-gd7165
    COREUTILS-6_9-205-g8f3cb
    COREUTILS-6_9-204-gbcc1
    COREUTILS-6_9-203-g0ea19

I think it's worthwhile to keep this "feature".
The "g" is now gone:

        * build-aux/git-version-gen: Remove git-describe's "g" that would
        always precede the abbreviated SHA1.  Suggestion from Dmitry V. Levin.
        diff --git a/build-aux/git-version-gen b/build-aux/git-version-gen

index 4a63111..0fe5f36 100755
--- a/build-aux/git-version-gen
+++ b/build-aux/git-version-gen
@@ -38,7 +38,8 @@ elif test -d .git \
         *) (exit 1) ;;
        esac
 then
-    v=`echo "$v" | sed 's/-/./g'`;
+    # Remove the "g" in git-describe's output string; change each - to a '.'
+    v=`echo "$v" | sed 's/\(.*\)-g/\1-/;s/-/./g'`;
 else
     v=$default_version
 fi