Bruno Haible <br...@clisp.org> writes: > 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.
Thanks -- and the following seems like a relevant quote: To update the list of year numbers, add each year in which you have made nontrivial changes to the package. (Here we assume you’re using a publicly accessible revision control server, so that every revision installed is also immediately and automatically published.) When you add the new year, it is not required to keep track of which files have seen significant changes in the new year and which have not. It is recommended and simpler to add the new year to all files in the package, and be done with it for the rest of the year. So in that case I think 'make update-copyright' should bump the copyright year for these scripts too, and it was a bug that it didn't. Collin, do you agree? Deriving the copyright year from the $VERSION string thus seems wrong. /Simon
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