On Sunday 28 December 2008 15:24:57 Marek Lindner wrote:
> Hello Sven,
>
> > Afterwards the development branch should change the RELEASE_VERSION to
> > the upcoming version number and the EXTRA_VERSION to a string which
> > informs the user that it is "unstable" and in development. This could be
> > for example "-dev", "-pre-alpha", "-beta" or "-rc1".
>
> I like your patch a lot. It could solve a nasty little problem that always
> tends to be forgotten. :-)
Yes, Simon told me about that :D

> Unfortunately, our compile farm which feeds the package repository extracts
> the SOURCE_VERSION from batman.h to generate the package name. Unless we
> rewrite the compile scripts to extract both defines we can't apply your
> patch as-is. This rewrite is not as painless as it could be. Certainly, at
> some point we want to touch the scripts to optimize the speed but that
> wasn't on our agenda right now.
Didn't know that but that makes patch of course useless. I liked the idea to have a version which marks the next release and the extra part which marks the actual status of the next release. This is only one way to express this.

> Do you see alternatives which allow us to reuse the existing compile farm
> and have the functionality you implemented ?
We could also assume that the version string has a specific format. A version number (RELEASE_VERSION part thing in my last patch) which has a postfix seperated by a dash. If that dash is found in the version string then we have a postfix and we are currently in a unstable version.

Don't know if this makes really sense for B.A.T.M.A.N. but the patch for that is trivial.

Best regards,
Sven Eckelmann