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

[Philippe Waroquiers]

On Wed, 2017-09-20 at 23:30 +0300, Petr Ovtchenkov wrote:
> Why you forget about
> <snip>
> Â  From info above follow, that "Automatic date update in version.in"
> give nothing
> Â  useful.
> 
> Â  From datestamps equality not follow ABI compatibility from one
> side,
> Â  and from datestamps inequality not follow ABI incompatibility from
> another side.
> </snip>
> ?
> 

The date in --version -v of valgrind is for sure not used to indicate
wh
atever kind of compatibility.

The addition of the date to --version -v was done following
user requests:  some users are using development snapshots, and would
like to have a (relatively) precise idea of which dev version they are
using, and if this dev version is old or not.
Of course, starting from the git sha1, they could verify in git the 
date of the commit, but typing --version -v is fast and easy, in
particular if you have no valgrind git repository at hand.

During valgrind 3.12 development, the version was only 3.12.0.SVN
During 3.13, --version -v added the svn revision.
Now, with 3.14, --version -v contains the git sha1 and the date
(as an easy way for the user to find what they are running).

Philippe