meaning of "Automatic date update in version.in" commits

[Philippe Waroquiers]

On Wed, 2017-09-20 at 21:54 +0200, Matthias Klose wrote:

> > 
> > Â Â Â Â ~/tmp/gdb/binutils-gdb (master)>git log -1 --format=%cd --
> > date=format:%Y%m%d
> > Â Â Â Â 20170920
> > 
> > Then there is no need for additional commit.
> 
> no, you can't assume that git is available for builds.
In valgrind, the version.h file is build as part of the dist tarball.
And if really someone just takes a copy of the sources before 
building and/or making the dist tarball, valgrind --version -v
will just tell that the git version and date is unknown.

Philippe