Don't forget about the usefulness of compile-time concatenation
for this sort of thing, i.e.:

#define VERSION "1.2.3"  /* in some header, or command line...*/
char hello[] = "NetBSD/foo " VERSION " xyzzyboot program\n";


Chris G. Demetriou writes:
 > 
 > i dunno, who's to say that it should start with "NetBSD/${MACHINE}"?
 > 
 > Also Who's to say that putting the version in a script which
 > contatenates text from one of its arguments is better than putting it
 > in the source?  e.g. on the Alpha, instead of having one nice string
 > embedded in exactly one source file, half of the string would now come
 > from text hard-coded in newvers.sh, half would come from a makefile,
 > and the array -- which doesn't have a declaration in a well known
 > place, btw -- still has to be _used_ in the source.  It just doesn't
 > seem to make much sense to me...

...