[Iverilog-devel] Add git commit information to version strings

[Jeevan V. <jva...@ya...>]

This is in regards to patch request 1935736 at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=193573&group_id=149850&atid=775999

Stephen Williams wrote:
> I'm a little concerned how this will impact the making of 
> snapshots. In particular, I use "get-archive" to export by tag. I 
> then extract the generated tar file, run the autoconf.sh script, 
> and re-tar to make the actual snapshot bundle.

> With this patch, the version.h header file is missing, and there is 
> no way to generate it once it is exported. We should discuss in the 
> iverilog-devel list what to do about this. Please follow up there 
> with any ideas you might have.

The git sources reveal that the git maintainers also use `git archive' to make a distribution tarball and use `git describe' to obtain a version string for their distribution.  They have a `dist' target in their Makefile which appends the file with the version to the tarball.  Also, instead of using a C include file for the version, like i did, they use a make include file; which allows them to automatically use the version in the tarball name and the RPM spec file.

Along those lines, i could add a `dist' target to Makefile.in that would automatically build a tarball for a given tag (or the head, by default) and add the version information file and an updated verilog.spec file to it.  One possible implementation would look like below.

In Makefile.in

    TAG ?= HEAD

    version.mk:
        # Put `VERSION = <output of git-describe $(TAG)>' in version.mk

    include version.mk

    all: ... version.mk
        ...
        cd driver; make VERSION=$(VERSION) $@

    verilog.spec: verilog.spec.in version.mk
        # Replace @@VERSION@@ with $(VERSION)

    SNAPSHOT = verilog-$(VERSION)
    dist: version.mk verilog.spec
        # Use git-archive $(TAG) to create $(SNAPSHOT).tar
        # Unpack to $(SNAPSHOT)
        # Copy version.mk and verilog.spec to $(SNAPSHOT)
        # Run autoconf.sh in $(SNAPSHOT)
        # Repack and compress $(SNAPSHOT) to $(SNAPSHOT).tar.gz

In driver/Makefile.in

    main.o: ... ../version.mk

The above example assumes that the verilog.spec file has been replaced with a verilog.spec.in file, and for simplicity's sake, there is just one version string instead of the two that i had in my patch.  The latter brings me to a question i have: should the "0.9.devel" version string be treated any differently than i did? I just left it as it was.

And, of course, anything else that needs to be done to make a snapshot can be added to the `dist' target.

In the end making a snapshot would look like below.

    make dist TAG=<tagname>




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