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

Frans Pop
2009-10-15T21:02:33Z

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