Hi,
Hmm, just noticed that only git builds are considered being "clean". That implies builds from release tarballs will *not* be considered clean. Was that intentional?
My thinking was that it is too easy for a ".version" file to be inadvertently incorrect. That is, if one pulls down a release tarball and then modifies some files, the version in the binary is not going to reflect the fact that changes were made.
I didn't think it would be too painful to require the git repo for those desiring a reproducible build. The "git describe" tool is quite useful for getting a meaningful hash of the repo.
Do you think that will be a problem?
Linux distro builds usually use release tarballs (plus possibly patches) not git checkouts. Having timestamp and hostname back in the version string then is a step backwards. Will have only the effect that distros start patching the build system again ...
One option I see is to consider builds clean in case EXTRAVERSION is present, so distros can simply set EXTRAVERSION to the rpm release.
Or add a new variable specifically for package build versioning, and possibly even set that automatically. rpm sets some environment variables in the build environment ....
cheers, Gerd