Hi Simon,
> > 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.
Yes, this is from the text about copyright notices.
> So in that case I think 'make update-copyright' should bump the
> copyright year for these scripts too
I just explained to you that we need to distinguish
- copyright notices
and
- --version output.
Now you get back to the ambiguous term "copyright year" and, based
on that term, claim a bug.
I don't want to hear this ambiguous term "copyright year" again.
> and it was a bug that it didn't.
> Collin, do you agree?
No, it's not a bug: The update-copyright program is documented to
"Update an FSF copyright year list to include the current year."
and since the --version output has only a single year, not a year list,
it is clear that this program modifies only copyright notices.
You are free to write a program that modifies the --version output.
But it would be wrong, IMO, to stuff it into 'update-copyright', because:
* Nobody reviews the changes done by 'update-copyright'. Nobody
can nor wants to review 1000 file changes. Therefore it is
mandatory that 'update-copyright' is as simple as possible.
* A program that modifies the --version output, OTOH, needs to deal
with several programming languages (C, Shell, Python, etc.) and with
various programming styles. Since it has an effect on the program's
behaviour, the changes MUST be reviewable and MUST be testable.
Bruno
