Re: serial number format

[Sam James]

Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org> writes:

> Sam James wrote:
>> For reasons once might be able to guess, I'm currently playing with
>> "known" M4 macros vs unseen serials and such.
>> 
>> At the moment, my tool uses the format described at
>> https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Serials.html.
>> 
>> My reading of it implies that the use in e.g. m4/build-to-host.m4
>> as '# build-to-host.m4 serial 3' isn't valid (I would expect "# serial 3
>> build-to-host.m4" or similar, closest analogue).
>> 
>> If I grep for serial in gnulib, I see a mix of both the format I
>> expected and this other format which uses the macro name too.
>> 
>> Are both formats valid (I know it's largely a convention)?
>
> The handling of the 'serial' lines happens in $PREFIX/bin/aclocal,
> lines 149..151:
>
>   # Match a serial number.
>   my $serial_line_rx = '^#\s*serial\s+(\S*)';
>   my $serial_number_rx = '^\d+(?:\.\d+)*$';
>
> and lines 604..709. This means, the format is a line that starts
> with '#', followed by optional whitespace, then the word 'serial',
> then some whitespace, then some consecutive non-whitespace characters.
> The latter must consist only of digits and dots and start with a digit
> (see also the error message at line 611:
>   "expecting a version string with only digits and dots").
>
> So, a line
>   # build-to-host.m4 serial 3
> has no effect.
>
> The format with fractional digits is, of course, useful for git branches,
> where we can have
>   # serial 4.1
> if on the 'master' branch the serial 4 and 5 already exist.
>
>> Is there a
>> reason for the apparent inconsistency in format used within e.g. gnulib?
>
> Yes: In some cases (see $PREFIX/bin/aclocal, lines 910..936) the generated
> aclocal.m4 file does not contain a reference to the .m4 file but its entire
> contents. In order to make it clear which .m4 file is where in the aclocal.m4
> file, I added a comment indicating the original file name. But having not
> read the Automake documentation, I thought I could merge it with the 'serial'
> line...
>
>> I'll inevitably have to try deal with both formats as they will be in
>> the wild anyway, but got curious ;)
>
> No, you need to deal only with the valid format, not with the ineffective one.
>
> I am applying these three patches:

Thank you very much Bruno -- for the quick fix, explanation, and prompt
reply. Cheers!

At a glance, it looks like gettext's m4/fixautomake.m4 at
least might be affected. There's some in GNU Autoconf's testsuite, but
that requires further inspection in case it's deliberately testing the
parsing.

I should really have all the GNU projects in one directory so I can
easily grep in future.

> [...]

best,
sam

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