Re: CVS commit: src/usr.bin/make

[David Holland <dholland-sourcechanges%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 09:53:13AM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
 > > However, I think you should put back the change to main.c that sets
 > > MAKE_VERSION if passed on the command line; I suspect either pkgsrc
 > > and/or sjg's portable release probably use it, and probably if we
 > > aren't going to put a dynamic date into it from the makefile, we
 > > should put a static date into it.
 > 
 > Okay, I'll put that part of the change back. It causes no actual harm
 > to leave it.
 > 
 > > Maybe what we want to set it to is something like
 > > [snip]
 > 
 > That sort of date seems unobjectionable since it reflects the last
 > change made to the sources rather than the last compile date. However,
 > I'm not sure why one actively wants it given that you have all the
 > rcsid's already in the binary. Also, why would one want it more in
 > "make" than in any other program?

Well, remember make is an interpreter; the date goes into the make
variable $(MAKE_VERSION) so the information is available to Makefiles.
I don't know to what extent that variable is used, standardized, or
historically expected, but given that Unix make has a large body of
lightly documented "standard" and historical behavior, it's usually
best not to remove anything like that unless one is quite sure it's
*not* needed.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost