Re: Add compiled date to git --version output?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 18, 2009, 05:07 UTC
Message-ID: <7v8wgchmcc.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <544dda350909172117r44761577m11e7d30a1a5d0c91@mail.gmail.com>

Nazri Ramliy <ayiehere@gmail.com> writes:

Show 27 quoted lines

> Sometimes I wanted to know how outdated git is on my system.
>
> Coming up with a script to parse "git --version" output to get the SHA1,
> and compare that to master's SHA1 seemed a little overkill compared to
> this:
>
> diff --git a/help.c b/help.c
> index 294337e..bc83491 100644
> --- a/help.c
> +++ b/help.c
> @@ -361,6 +361,9 @@ const char *help_unknown_cmd(const char *cmd)
>
>  int cmd_version(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
>  {
> -       printf("git version %s\n", git_version_string);
> +       printf("git version %s compiled %s %s\n",
> +                       git_version_string,
> +                       __DATE__,
> +                       __TIME__);
>         return 0;
>  }
>
> With this, git --version gives:
>
>         git version 1.6.5.rc1.19.g8426.dirty compiled Sep 18 2009 12:03:29
>
> Thoughts?

It's open source, so you are welcome to do that to your binary.

Personally, I do not want it. My build scripts depend on the version string at the end if the output to omit re-building what is already installed.

Seriously, the version number is useful to track down the bug, and perhaps your compiler and library versions might be useful to help diagnose build related errors, but when would that __DATE__/__TIME__ be useful more than what "ls -l /usr/bin/git" would give you?