Re: How to maintain program version info with Make?

[Paul D. Smith]

%% "Bob Stark" <bstark@nospam.protechpts.com> writes:

  bs> I'd like to automate this step, and keep a file in my directory
  bs> with the current version number, either in the contents of the
  bs> file, or in the filename. I need a few operations on this file,
  bs> something like:

  bs> make showversion    # Show current version number and date
  bs> make setversion     # Set new version number into tracking file
  bs> make setfiledate    # Set filedate of all files to midnight on version 
date
  bs> make setfooters     # Store the version and filedate in document footers

  bs> These are just proposed externals, I'll come up with better names
  bs> as it shakes out.

Sounds not too hard...

  bs> What is a good practice for doing this on a win32 platform?

Aha!  Now comes the fly in the ointment!

The reality is quite simple: make (even GNU make) does not provide any
built-in facilities for manipulating files in any way.  All commands
make invokes are passed to a shell, and the shell does all the work.

Therefore, you will have to use some non-make tool to perform this
manipulation.  There's simply no way around this.

If you elect to continue with this model I suggest you install Perl.
Although larger, it's fully supported natively on Windows with a Windows
installer (try, for example, ActiveState Perl) and it will provide you
with a single extremely powerful tool that will handle all your
requirements, rather than trying to install 20 smaller tools that would
normally be provided by a UNIX system.


An alternative would be to put the version into the makefile, as a
variable setting, then maybe you can provide it on the command line of
various already-existing tools to set the version...?

-- 
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 Paul D. Smith <psmith@gnu.org>          Find some GNU make tips at:
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 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist