[BuildTools] Proposal: XXX_SVN_REV change from quoted string to numeric

[Ted Ralphs]

On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 7:26 PM, Lou Hafer <lou at cs.sfu.ca> wrote:

>> There is also a question of just what constitutes a "version" I am saying
> this
>> because the proposed windows solution to this suggested a tool that
>> increments the version number every time I initiate a new _build command_,
>
>> completely irrespective of whether changes occurred between successive
>> compilations or not. I view that as completely unworkable.
>
>        Timely, since I have my head in Windows for a bit. Could you
> elaborate? What was the proposed
> solution? Along that line, any thoughts about a good solution within Visual
> Studio?

I don't think there's really much question about what constitutes a
"version". Ultimately, each SVN revision is a version. For trunk and
stable, you need to know the revision number to truly know what
version you are using. For releases, there should be a one-one
correspondance between SVN revision numbers and releases. In any case,
I'm the one who's done all the versioning stuff so far and I wasn't
really aware that there was a proposed solution for Windows (meaning
MSVC++). I did do quite a bit of research into this and found that
there are some ways of doing automatic version numbering in MSVC++
(different from what Gus mentioned I think), but no matter how you
slice it, there will always be platforms and setups for which any
automated solution I could come up with would fail. I think there may
be some e-mail threads detailing all of this. In the end, after much
thought, I came to the conclusion that there almost has to be some
sort of manual step if we want there to be a universal solution. I
sort of gave up on it after putting a lot of time and effort into
trying to come up with something. But I'm open to ideas and to trying
again. But there is a list of other things we should finish up first
if possible. I will resurrect the e-mail if there is interest.

Cheers,

Ted
-- 
Dr. Ted Ralphs
Associate Professor, Lehigh University
(610) 628-1280
ted 'at' lehigh 'dot' edu
coral.ie.lehigh.edu/~ted