Re: [PATCH, v2] kbuild: Improve version string logic

[Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl>]

On Thursday 15 October 2009, David Rientjes wrote:
> Sigh, this is becoming ridiculous.

Yes, I thoroughly agree. I'm afraid I don't see much point in repeating my 
arguments anymore.

We seem to be unable to get eachothers arguments. I think I understand your 
PoV, or at least your aims, and I even agree with those. I don't think you 
really get my concerns about the implementation, but I give up. I seem 
unable to make you understand; probably my limitation. So, let's just 
agree to disagree.

My conclusion in the mean time is that the whole concept of having the "+" 
is broken. Especially since my discovery earlier today [1] that it is more 
than likely to break existing scripts in userspace (not packaging, but 
regular userspace).

I plan to continue to use my own naming conventions, even if that means I 
have to patch the "+' out of the Makefile. Especially since it seems I 
have to decide between risking breakage in user space and confirming to 
this new standard. And that choice is simple.

> Do you really expect people to email bug reports and say "btw, I
> compiled with KBUILD_NO_LOCALVERSION_EXTRA because I thought it looked
> prettier, this is actually Linus' git at a3ccf63"?

In the current situation I already frequently provide the output of 'git 
describe master' as part of bug reports. Nothing new there. And users will 
*still* need to do that as the "+" does not tell anyone where exactly they 
are at. It could equally be release +50 or +4000 commits.

Cheers.
FJP

[1] http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/10/15/210