On 09/30/2016 11:04 AM, Alexander Belopolsky wrote:
There would be little harm in keeping the version in the repository's Makefile as well.
I'm afraid I see some harm. Yes, bumping the release could be done automatically or semiautomatically as part of a release procedure, along the lines that Paul Koning suggested. But this would mean that the only time the repository Makefile's version number would be correct would be near the time of a release; at most other points of time the version number would be wrong, and this would be confusing. Also, it would mean that bumping the release would not be an atomic operation, as it is now. I'm also worried that downstream distributors will modify the data but still call it "2016g". We are considering installing the version number along with the other data; if we do that, this mislabeling problem will get worse because the wrong label will become part of the runtime environment, and having the wrong version number in a development Makefile will likely contribute to the mislabeling.