[Mesa-dev] [PATCH] mesa: Allow custom text to be inserted in version string at buildtime

[Ian Romanick]

On 04/23/2013 08:12 AM, Chad Versace wrote:
> On 04/23/2013 06:19 AM, Ian Romanick wrote:
>> On 04/23/2013 03:28 AM, Chad Versace wrote:
>>> This allows maintainers/packagers/testers to tag the build with
>>> information that will be reported by GL_VERSION.
>>>
>>> If the environemt variable or make variable MESA_VERSION_STRING_EXTRA is
>>           environment
>>
>>> set, then its values will appear in the GL_VERSION string immediately
>>> after "Mesa X.Y" and before "(git-xxxxxxx)".
>>>
>>> This patch implements supports MESA_VERSION_STRING_EXTRA only for
>>> Android.
>>> Other build systems are left as an excercise.
>>
>> Why is this useful?
>
> The commit message says why: it allows packagers to tag the build with info
> that gets reported by GL_VERSION.

That explains how you could use it, not why.  I was asking why.

> How is it used now? The Mesa that gets shipped bi-weekly internally in
> Intel
> for Android is not a snapshot of master nor of any stable branch. Yet, that
> snapshot of Mesa is "official", as far as Intel's Android efforts are
> concerned.
> The Android team is using this patch to inject into GL_VERSION the name
> of the bi-weekly
> Android release.

I don't think our internal brokenness needs to pollute the upstream tree.

> Without this patch, you may one day get a bug report that says: "This
> bug exists
> in Mesa 9.2-devel (git-xxxxxxx)". Then, you will search for the git
> sha1, and
> unable to find it, yell bloody murder and close the bug as invalid. With
> this
> patch, though, you may get a bug report that says: "This bug exists in
> Mesa 9.2-devel otc-android-2013-04-23-blah (git-xxxxxxx)", and then you
> will know how to find that Mesa.

No, I still won't know how to find it.  I'll just know that it comes 
from some weird, hidden repo... which I would know anyways since it 
would be reported as an Android bug.  So... I'm still not seeing this 
make anything actually better.