[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#4712) future CVS versioning

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

See also PR#2479.

It would be possible to have the cvs version string "automatically" 
updated, e.g. "cvs-yymmdd" or some such...but to do this right means 
moving the version information out of config.h and version.h and into 
version.c.  Right now every time the version changes everything has to 
be recompiled, which is bad.

The version string has to go straight into CVS, not be generated by 
autoconf or configure.  We want the actual date of the CVS files, not 
the last date when ./configure was run.

That said, the code portions would be pretty simple:

version.h:

   const char *get_version_string();

version.c:

   #define CVS_VERSION_STRING "cvs20030728"

   const char *get_version_string(void)
   {
#ifdef IS_DEVEL_VERSION
     return CVS_VERSION_STRING;
#else
     /* ... */
#endif
   }

and the only problem remaining is to determine how/when the version 
string is updated.

We've looked into "automatic" updating of CVS, e.g., having a script run 
to update a file on every checking.  But this is a dangerous hack - if 
not done correctly you can have deadlock when cvs tries to commit within 
the commit.

Another alternative is simply to have a cron job to run every so often 
to do the update checking.  This could be every day, every week, or 
every time a cvs checking is done.

Either way the script would look something like:

   echo "#define CVS_VERSION_STRING \"cvs `date %y%m%d`\"" > file.h

with an

   #include "file.h"

in version.c.


Getting this to work properly may be tricky, but it has substantial 
benefits for bug reporting.

jason