Re: gnulib-tool --version

[Jim Meyering]

Bruno Haible <address@hidden> wrote:

> Jim Meyering wrote:
>> > |   Also, the suffix "-dirty" is a bit offensive. How about "-unreleased" 
>> > or
>> > |   "-dev", or "-alpha" or "-cuttingedge", or "-mm" (for Linux fans :-)?
>> >
>> > That's something for Jim to decide, with the git-version-gen script.  But
>> > given those options, I like '-dev'.  At any rate, the '-dirty' suffix is
>> > only present if you have uncommitted changes still in your tree.
>>
>> I agree that "-dirty" is a little annoying, but think of that as a feature 
>> ;-)
>> It might encourage people not to use a version labeled "-dirty".
>
> On the contrary, the free software community strives by the fact that
> everyone can use modified copies. We would be nowhere if everyone would use
> only unmodified copies of, say, RedHat distributions.

That suggests you have misunderstood.

Anyone can make their own release, including local changes,
and as long as they commit all of their changes before
running e.g., "make dist", the resulting version string
will not contain the "-dirty" suffix.

The resulting version string is "-dirty" IFF one builds
with locally-modified-but-not-committed changes.  And doing *that*
is questionable enough (from version-control and reproducibility
standpoints) that it deserves a label more pejorative than "-modified".