Re: meaning of "Automatic date update in version.in" commits

[Petr Ovtchenkov <ptr at void-ptr dot info>]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 08:05:48 -0700
Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com> wrote:

> [adding the GDB group, as this affects both]
> 
> > What is the meaning of "Automatic date update in version.in" commits?
> > I mean commits like f625a739e5.
> > 
> > This commits litter commits tree and create problems for  	
> > deterministic, bit-identical and/or verifiable builds.
> > 
> > May be worth to remove this (historical?) artifact?
> 
> We've had that discussion several times in the past. I'd be quite
> happy to get rid of that daily commit, and most people here probably
> would be too. The issue is that no one has been able to get us
> to agree on what we should be doing instead, and then implement it.
> Part of the obstacles, I think, is that everyone has their own idea
> of the requirements that should be met. Maybe one solution would be
> to ask the group of Global Maintainers to make a decision (at least
> for GDB) once everyone had a chance to provide their feedback. Once
> we have a clear plan of what should be done, I suspect finding
> a volunteer to implement it wouldn't be too hard. I might even
> take an hour or two in a weekend to look into that...
> 

For [possible] transition/solution/etc it would be useful to tell here what
this ["Automatic date update in version.in"] commits was intended for.

Thanks,

--

   - ptr