Version ident of tools

[Erik Groenhuis]

On 7 Aug 2004 Tony van der Hoff wrote:

> Erik Groenhuis <e.groenhuis at xs4all.nl> wrote in message
> <bc7152da4c.root at hop2.xs4all.nl>
> 
> > (Sidenote: the DefMod program gives no indication as to it's version,
> > so it's very difficult to find out from which version of the sources a
> > particular executable has been built).
> >  
> Try DefMod -help, which gives (amongst other things) the build date.

Ah, yes, spotted this one already, and was half expecting this answer.
The problem with the build date is that it does not actually identify
the version of the program.

For example, when doing a lot of building and re-building from
different source tags in one day, you may end up with three or four
versions of a program, all showing the same date for -help.

And, as OSLibBin$Path is currently attached to Run$Path, there is no
indication, let alone a guarantee as to which version is run.

Another problem occurs over a longer time period. When you type 'DefMod
-help' and see a date of, say, six months ago, it is unusual (and for me
impossible) to remember from what version of the sources this instance
was built. Maybe it is even worse, and there are two versions from that
period, made one day apart. Which one is which.

It just occured to me that, all or most GNU programs can report their
version number in some way (usually with -v or --version). Presumably
the sources for these can suggest how this is achieved.

Now I'm gettin curious (:-). I'll look into this and try to write a
description of how this might be achieved for the OSLib tools. 

-- 
Erik Groenhuis http://www.xs4all.nl/~erikgrnh
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