From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from scc-mailout-kit-01.scc.kit.edu (scc-mailout-kit-01.scc.kit.edu [129.13.231.81]) by fantadrom.bsd.lv (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id 72bb1f38 for ; Mon, 16 Jan 2017 19:37:34 -0500 (EST) Received: from asta-nat.asta.uni-karlsruhe.de ([172.22.63.82] helo=hekate.usta.de) by scc-mailout-kit-01.scc.kit.edu with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (envelope-from ) id 1cTHmG-0000mu-ER; Tue, 17 Jan 2017 01:37:34 +0100 Received: from donnerwolke.usta.de ([172.24.96.3]) by hekate.usta.de with esmtp (Exim 4.77) (envelope-from ) id 1cTHmB-0006Ux-JJ; Tue, 17 Jan 2017 01:37:27 +0100 Received: from athene.usta.de ([172.24.96.10]) by donnerwolke.usta.de with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1cTHmB-0007uW-D6; Tue, 17 Jan 2017 01:37:27 +0100 Received: from localhost (athene.usta.de [local]) by athene.usta.de (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTPA id b12f356b; Tue, 17 Jan 2017 01:37:27 +0100 (CET) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2017 01:37:27 +0100 From: Ingo Schwarze To: Michael Stapelberg Cc: tech@mdocml.bsd.lv Subject: Re: [PATCH] Implement -v to display the current version and exit Message-ID: <20170117003727.GA87474@athene.usta.de> References: X-Mailinglist: mdocml-tech Reply-To: tech@mdocml.bsd.lv MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.6.2 (2016-07-01) Hi, Michael Stapelberg wrote on Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 09:29:07AM +0100: > When using mandoc's output in other services (e.g. a web man viewer), > it would be beneficial to display the version of mandoc that is in > use. Why? In particular in a web viewer, you would end up displaying that to end users. They really shouldn't care. > Currently, one cannot determine mandoc's version in a package > management-indepent way. Exactly, and that's a feature. Version numbers contained in binaries are very harmful. Years ago, this option existed. I got so fed up with it that i deleted it. Before, many bug reports were unusable because people simply said "i'm using mandoc-1.10.5" and didn't bother mentioning how it was built and packaged, or whether it was -current or -release. Once the version-option was gone, that problem completely went away and people started reporting properly, like "i installed mandoc from pkgsrc on FreeBSD 9, and ..." or "I compiled mandoc from CVS HEAD as of (date) on Solaris 11, and ..." > Please consider merging the attached patch. Thanks! No, i don't want that. If you absolutely need that for debian, consider making it a debian-local patch, but please make sure that the following is contained in the response printed: (1) the substring "debian" (2) if the package is OS-version-dependent, the complete version of the operating system the binary can run on (3) the name of the package manager that created the package containing the binary (4) the version number that package manager assigned to the package, including OS-local patch levels Including the upstream release number is not important - but it will likely happen anyway because it's probably part of item (4). I cannot do that upstream because the essential information to print is package-manager-dependent, and by definition, the upstream build system cannot know anything about that. But anyway, keeping track of which versions of software you have installed is the task of the package manager in the first place, and not the task of individual programs. Oh, by the way, why can't you get the information you want from the package manager instead of from mandoc? If you can run mandoc -V i guess you can run dpkg-query -l mandoc with the proper options just as well? Yours, Ingo -- To unsubscribe send an email to tech+unsubscribe@mdocml.bsd.lv