The automake manual recommends that .m4 files use a serial number for versioning, so that it is possible to tell when an .m4 installed by aclocal is updated.
<quote> Because third-party macros defined in ‘*.m4’ files are naturally shared between multiple projects, some people like to version them. This makes it easier to tell which of two M4 files is newer. Since at least 1996, the tradition is to use a ‘#serial’ line for this. A serial number should be a single line of the form # serial version where version is a version number containing only digits and dots. Usually people use a single integer, and they increment it each time they change the macro (hence the name of “serial”). Such a line should appear in the M4 file before any macro definition. The ‘#’ must be the first character on the line, and it is OK to have extra words after the version, as in #serial version garbage Normally these serial numbers are completely ignored by aclocal and autoconf, like any genuine comment. However when using aclocal’s ‘--install’ feature, these serial numbers will modify the way aclocal selects the macros to install in the package: if two files with the same basename exists in your search path, and if at least one of them use a ‘#serial’ line, aclocal will ignore the file that has the older ‘#serial’ line (or the file that has none). </quote> Thanks, Mike Gran _______________________________________________ Bug-guile mailing list Bug-guile@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-guile
