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

[Matthias Klose]

On 20.09.2017 22:07, Philippe Waroquiers wrote:
> On Wed, 2017-09-20 at 21:54 +0200, Matthias Klose wrote:
> 
>>>
>>>     ~/tmp/gdb/binutils-gdb (master)>git log -1 --format=%cd --
>>> date=format:%Y%m%d
>>>     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.

but we are talking here about sonames for development snapshots.  A soname like
2.29.50.unknown doesn't change.