Re: Dates in boot loaders on !x86

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost>]

On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 08:17:38PM +0000, David Holland wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 04:24:37PM +0100, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
>  > Well, we derive the version to include from the version file. This is
>  > controlled by a central script. What about adding support to expand
>  > $DATE$ or some other magic version string, if it is the last in the
>  > version file? If you are actively developing, you can add that to the
>  > version file and hopefully remember to replace it with a proper version
>  > entry before commit.
> 
> That's unnecessarily complicated. There's prior art for this:
> 
> NetBSD tanaqui 5.99.41 NetBSD 5.99.41 (TANAQUI) #32: Wed Dec  1 01:20:02 EST 
> 2010 dholland@tanaqui:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/TANAQUI i386

Please look at the mail that started this threat.  newvers provides
multiple independent variable, so conditionally providing one of them
needs both an option and output mangling in the users.

The consensus seems to be that during normal usage, the build date is
irrelevant and doesn't provide any value. Based on Martin's suggestion,
I will add a MKVERBOSEBOOT variable or so (haven't made my mind up about
the name). If it is set, bootprog_kernrev will include the build date as
well as user and host name (like the current bootprog_maker). The
current bootprog_maker and bootprog_kernrev go away.

Joerg