#2016 Cannot compile git-snapshotI

[Shigeharu TAKENO]

I download the snapshot of git version of gnuplot from "gnuplot-main" git repository. And then run prepare and configure. But make stopped:

cut: ../.git/HEAD: No such file or directory
make: *** No rule to make target ../.git/', needed bytimestamp.h'. Stop.

What should I do ?

If the directory .git is lacked in the snapshot and needed for compilation, I think the prepare script should make it.

[Ethan Merritt]

I don't know.
Good question.
I do not know exactly what script is used to prepare the snapshot. The snapshot is provided directly by the SourceForge site infrastructure. It is not something that we made.

[Shigeharu TAKENO]

Thanks for reply.
I did:

mkdir .git
touch .git/HEAD
./configure --prefix=...
cat <<EOF> src/timestamp.h

ifndef GNUPLOT_TIMEBASE_H_INCLUDED

define GNUPLOT_TIMEBASE_H_INCLUDED

const char gnuplot_date[] = "`date +'%Y-%m-%d' ";

endif / GNUPLOT_TIMEBASE_H_INCLUDED /

EOF
make

Then we could build from git snapshot.

[gbm]

The code snapshots downloaded from sourceforge git repos do contain following info:
1. Project name
2. Git repo name
3. Git hash
4. Commit date

The snapshot is downloaded as a zip file with name 'ProjectName-GitRepoName-GitHash.zip'.
When unzipped, source files are extracted to the folder 'ProjectName-GitRepoName-GitHash'
All the files in the snapshot have the commit date as modification timestamp.

The attached patch, applied before 'prepare', allows to compile gnuplot from a downloaded snapshot,
and sets 'gnuplot_date' to 'CommitDate [GitHash]'.

As an example, to compile current head ([ec78df5]), from downloaded gnuplot-gnuplot-main-ec78df5bd0562bf97dbab1b1d5d9aac290008704.zip i did:

unzip gnuplot-gnuplot-main-ec78df5bd0562bf97dbab1b1d5d9aac290008704.zip
cd gnuplot-gnuplot-main-ec78df5bd0562bf97dbab1b1d5d9aac290008704
patch -p1 < build-from-downloaded-git-snapshot.patch
./prepare
./configure
make

The obtained gnuplot, identifies itself with "Version 5.3 patchlevel 0 last modified 2018-01-30 [ec78df5]"

Miquel

[Shigeharu TAKENO]

Thanks for reply.
It is good idea to patch src/Makefile.am before running pepare script.
But on my Solaris 10 machine, your patch may fail since it does not have stat command.
And I also change the long directory name of snapshot to short name before the compile,
so I can't get head string like "ec78df5".

Well, I use the similar patch to yours, to get date by date command. Thanks.