Re: Serial number formats

[Bruno Haible]

Ralf Wildenhues asked:
> What exactly is the point of using a different format and extraction
> code than aclocal does? ...
> Gettext is using a format slightly incompatible to the aclocal one here,

aclocal exploits '# serial' lines since 2005-02-01. Gettext is using the
format that you call "slightly incompatible" already since Jan 2002 at least
(in gettext 0.11). What was the point of encoding in 'aclocal', in 2005,
a syntax that not all widely spread autoconf macros were using?

> I have so far seen no reason
> whatsoever why aclocal should change, rather than Gettext.  The aclocal
> format for serial numbers can embody all needed information, as noted by
> Colin.

Colin's proposal, to put the version number before the versioned item, was
not serious.

Bruno