Re: Automatically keeping "last modified" up to date

[Hans-Bernhard B. <HBB...@t-...>]

On 07.08.2013 10:53, Lars Hecking wrote:
>   I'm wondering if the best option is to put all the changeable items into
>   a generated header file that is included by version.c; even config.h would
>   do.

That approach would have its own downsides.  The first that comes to 
mind is that there are builds of gnuplot that do _not_ use autotools, 
thus no (automaticallly updated) config.h either.  Right now, only one 
of those (config/mingw/Makefile) tries to duplicate the effect of 
modifying version.c on-the-fly.  The others only get that effect if 
either autotools or the MinGW makefile did the modification already.

Generally, any extra file this information would go into will be missing 
completely in non-autotools builds.

And if you put that stuff into the main config.h, that that would defeat 
the purpose of make, because every time you update ChangeLog, the entire 
program would be rebuilt.  That can't be right.

As far as I'm concerned, I haven't seen that mechanism actually working 
for so long I didn't even know it existed before this discussion.  I run 
builds using multiple compilers, and the out-of-tree builds that 
requires break the version.c update mechanism.