Re: Autoconf/Automake is not using version from AC_INIT

[Peter Johansson]

Hi Bob,

On 12/1/21 10:35 am, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> I recently updated GraphicsMagick to use the 5 argument form of 
> AC_INIT and the one argument form of AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE.  I also used 
> m4_esyscmd to get version info from an external script.  The 
> invokation looks like this:
>
> AC_INIT(m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packagename]),
>         m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packageversion]),
>         m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packagebugreport]),
>         m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packagetarname]),
>         m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packageurl]))
>
> Today I noticed that 'make dist' is producing the wrong tarball 
> package version.  Instead of producing the expected version, the 
> tarball version matches the date of the configure.ac file.
>
> This is what comes out of the version.sh script:
>
> ./version.sh packageversion
> 1.4.020210110%
>
> The version.sh script bases the package version on the most recent 
> entry in the ChangeLog file.
>
> This is what is claimed to be the tarball version several times already:
>
>   GraphicsMagick-1.4.020210106.tar.gz

The problem is that there is no dependency in the Makefile telling that 
autoconf need to be rerun when the version has changed. Automake has the 
variable 'CONFIGURE_DEPENDENCIES' for this purpose, so adding

CONFIGURE_DEPENDENCIES = ChangeLog

would solve the issue but will cause a rerun of autoconf every time you 
touch ChangeLog. Rather you want a stamp file, whose timestamp only 
changes when the output of 'version.sh packageversion' changes. 
Something along the lines:

$(srcdir)/.version: ChangeLog
    cd $(srcdir) && ./version packageversion > .version-tmp && 
move-if-change .version-tmp .version

EXTRA_DIST = $(srcdir)/.version

I don't see any way without a specific file holding the timestamp on 
when the version was last updated.


Cheers,

Peter
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