binutils version of snapshot builds

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Wed, 21 Mar 2007, Andreas Schwab wrote:

> I think trying to replace "GNU binutils" with something else is the wrong
> thing to do.  The vendor string should be an additional information in the
> version string, not replacing anything.  After all, the package bundle is
> still GNU binutils.  This also makes the first GNU redundant.  The actual
> version string should look like this:

The package bundle may or may not be GNU binutils, that's up to the 
packager.  It may be just a distribution of GNU binutils (with a 
distributor version there), it may be a larger toolchain or OS 
distribution considered as a whole with the toolchain or OS considered the 
larger package.

> ld (GNU binutils) 2.17.50.20070321

That depends on whether you consider "ld" or "GNU ld" to be the "standard 
or canonical name" for the linker.  You can change that - of course 
breaking even more of the linker version checks out there.  If changing 
it, you might wish to go over the canonical names for every program in 
binutils - why "GNU ld" and "GNU assembler" at present rather than "GNU 
linker" and "GNU assembler" or "GNU ld" and "GNU as"?

> The vendor string should either be appended inside the parens, or put in
> another pair of parens before the version.

The GNU Coding Standards formats are

  canonical-name version
  canonical-name (package-name) version
  canonical-name (package-name package-version) version

and --with-pkgversion allows you to specify what's inside the parentheses 
as package-name or package-name package-version.  You have full 
flexibility in what you pass there - whether you describe it as GNU 
binutils or a larger distribution or both and what versions you include.  
Because of the wide range of different ways in which binutils is 
distributed, this flexibility is useful.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com