Re: [PATCH] depcomp: recognize tabs as whitespace in the dashmstdout mode

[Jim Meyering]

Eric Blake wrote:
> On 02/03/2012 11:29 AM, Peter Rosin wrote:
>> Jim Meyering skrev 2012-02-03 19:05:
>>> Stefano Lattarini wrote:
>>>> On 02/03/2012 03:51 PM, Peter Rosin wrote:
>>>>> Wait, there's a (trivial) conflict.  But if I resolve that and go
>>>>> on with the merge anyway we will end up with two different depcomps
>>>>> with "scriptversion=2012-02-03.12; # UTC".  Not good.
>>>
>>> I agree that with multiple branches, lines like that
>>> (as with CVS/Rcs $Id$, $Log$, etc.) guarantee spurious conflicts
>>> with nearly every merge of that file.  Nuke 'em.
>>
>> I don't worry at all for Automake proper, but for consumers.
>>
>> If I understand correctly, some other projects (at least used to)
>> pull in depcomp (and other scripts) from the tip of development,
>> others from the latest release.  It is bad if they get different
>> versions depending on the method they use, and it is good if
>> we can keep the promise that later versions are always better.
>> scriptversion="<date>" makes it easy for the external consumer to
>> verify this.
>>
>> This was the explanation given by Ralf a couple of years ago
>> anyway, if memory serves me right.
>
> Maybe it's worth a custom merge manager that knows how to handle
> scriptversion lines, to always update it to the current date when doing
> a merge, similar to how we have a custom merge manager
> git-merge-changelog for back in the days when changelog was
> version-controlled (rather than git _being_ the changelog).

That would be a fine compromise.