G. Branden Robinson wrote: > I've > become uncertain about whether groff's build is doing to the right thing > with respect to the '.version' file that it creates in Makefile.am (by > running git-version-gen).
GNU gettext's Makefile.am happens to have the same rules as groff's Makefile.am. As far as I understand the intent: - .tarball-version is a file that the maintainer creates when they are about to create a new release. - The git-version-gen output is derived from this file (if present) and from the git history. - The .version file is a cache of the git-version-gen output, so that it can be used as a dependency in Makefile rules. > In Git checkouts, this file has a tendency to > keep stale version string in it that grows progressively staler Yes, I observe this as well, in GNU gettext. Bruno