Re: toolchain/58960: Missing support for _NETBSD_REVISIONID on various ports

["Robert Elz via gnats" <gnats-admin%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR toolchain/58960; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: toolchain/58960: Missing support for _NETBSD_REVISIONID on various ports
Date: Sun, 05 Jan 2025 01:45:04 +0700

     Date:        Sat,  4 Jan 2025 17:45:00 +0000 (UTC)
     From:        campbell+netbsd%mumble.net@localhost
     Message-ID:  <20250104174500.BFCCF1A923C%mollari.NetBSD.org@localhost>
 
   | For migration to a modern revision control system which has tree-wide
   | revision ids rather than per-file numbering, in order to avoid losing
   | valuable ident(1) diagnostics
 
 The point of those things is so two users, perhaps running different
 releases entirely (as in 9 vs HEAD) can easily tell if the code they
 are using is the same or not (without needing any src/* files at all).
 
 Lots of stuff is unchanged even over major releases, and should identify
 itself as being unchanged.   I can't see how anything supplied by build.sh
 can possibly fill that need, and having every file in the system contain
 a revision which are all the same seems pointless, and that's what most
 people would end up with - whether they build from source or install a
 binary release (in a src release, close to everything, except some scripts
 and man pages, ends up depending upon sys/param.h so any build of any
 new release version ends up compiling close to everything).
 
 If a so called "modern revision control system" can't put any form of
 (per file) revision info (indicating when, in some sense, that particular
 file was last updated) then we really shouldn't even consider using it.
 
 If they can, that's what we should be using, not some build.sh supplied
 value (and how would that work for people who simply go into some part
 of the source tree and do "make install" to install just one updated
 program/library, without touching anything else) ?
 
 kre
 
 ps: I know that if one uses build.sh -u (when sys/param.h hasn't been altered)
 and has that install over the top of a currently installed system, then just
 a few files need be recompiled, or installed, but my guess would be that's a
 relatively rare usage pattern.