Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom version numbering

[Ralf Hemmecke]

On 06/25/2007 10:41 AM, address@hidden wrote:
> > Only, the CHANGELOG is not installed.

> Eh? <http://axiom.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/axiom/trunk/axiom>
> shows CHANGELOG in revision 631 of the trunk. Why is CHANGELOG
> not installed? Can you SVN get the file?

Would you like the end user (who does not want to bother with 
compilation) require to issue an svn/git/darc/cvs (or whatever) command?
No. It should be easy to get an exact reference to the version someone 
is using by typing

  axiom --version

Whatever comes out from that should be in one-to-one correspondence to 
the branch+revision number (or if you like git so much the md5sum that 
identifies the version).

As Gaby pointed out, a x.y.z form is advantageous for package managers 
at Debian/Red Hat etc. But that would probably only apply to Gold. We 
have many more versions around an they should identify themselves 
uniquely. The build timestamp is not necessarily referring to the 
version, since I can roll back in the history and build a version from 
last year.

> Why? Are these versions suppressing the banner? Is CHANGELOG missing?

Banner is OK, but axiom --version should also work (without actually 
starting AXIOMsys).

> Question: When was this image built? Has it been rebuilt?
>
> When Axiom builds it creates a file called lastBuildDate in the home
> directory of the Axiom build. The date and time stamp from this file
> identifies the exact date and time of the build. The date and time
> stamp is 
>  (a) set as the value of the *yearweek* variable in the image. Try:
>        )lisp *yearweek*
>        Value = "Friday May 18, 2007 at 00:44:15 "
>      Thus you can write programs which depend in the date and time
>      of the current build image.
>
>  (b) The *yearweek* variable is printed in the banner.
>      Thus you know when or if the image has been rebuilt.
>
> In a binary distribution you can tell when the image was built and
> you can tell if the user rebuilt it after receiving the binary image.

It would not hurt if we have a x.y.z scheme and add the date on the 
banner when this Gold version was released. (We never release Silver to 
an ordinary user. Such versions (and the experimental branches) have to 
be fetched from the repositories.

> Question: What "Axiom" sources were used to build the image?
>
> Distributions are only updated on a reasonably infrequent basis.  Thus
> the finest grain of change need only identify the month and year of
> the sources.  (Scratchpad was "released" weekly, hence the name
> "yearweek")

Note that it would be perfectly possible that Debian people do little 
tweaks that are not in any of our repositories. You would want to see 
whether something like that happened so that you don't chase a bug that 
you will be unable to find since it is in the code introduced by 
somebody else.

> When you get a distribution the month and year of the source tree
> is encoded into the top level Makefile as the first line:
>   head -1 Makefile
>   VERSION="Axiom (May 2007)"
> This information is also printed in the banner.

Tim, I use Linux, but why should I bother to install the sources, if I 
don't want to look at them and if I am happy what Debian produced for me?

  head -1 Makefile

is totally helpless, since I would not have the sources. Some users of 
Axiom would be happy with a binary version of Axiom, so the binary 
should identify the exact origin.

> Question: Which "Axiom Distribution" is this?
>
> In rereading your post I think I understand the confusion. We are not
> talking about the same thing when we say "Axiom". The above information
> suffices to identify the exact version of an "Axiom distribution". By the
> term "Axiom Distribution" I mean one intended for the outside world
> which was built from either Arch, address@hidden, or address@hidden
> "Distributions" intended for world use should be buit from these places.

Of course. Axiom Distribution = Gold. But for development we also need a 
binary that identifies itself. That is just to make life easier. See 
Martin suffering...

Ralf