Simon Josefsson wrote:
> > Maybe, I am misreading but I think using $VERSION makes more sense
> > according to the GNU Coding Standards [1]:
> >
> > This copyright notice only needs to mention the most recent year in
> > which changes were made—there’s no need to list the years for previous
> > versions’ changes.
>
> Thanks for digging up the reference. I wonder if something changed
> here. Can someone remind me why we do the 'make update-copyright'
> dance?
The GNU Maintainers Guide and the GNU Coding Standards have different sections
- about the copyright notice in source files
https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html
- about the --version output of programs
https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/_002d_002dversion.html
Neither is a superset of the other one.
update-copyright deals with the *copyright notices* only, not with the
--version output.
We run 'make update-copyright' every year, because updating the copyright
notices lazily is
- more tedious,
- more error-prone
than doing it at once.
Bruno
