[Python-Dev] tickling version numbers during release

[Guido van Rossum]

> It seems like there is always a flurry of checkins associated with bumping
> version numbers whenever a release is impending.  Wouldn't it make sense to
> stuff the version number into a file somewhere then add a make target to the
> makefile to update the relevant files and check them into cvs?

Is it worth spending the time to write a script that gets run only
once per revision?  (The bump from 2.1 to 2.2 causes many more
checkins than e.g. from 2.1 to 2.1.1 or from 2.1a1 to 2.1b1.)

It won't reduce the nubmer of checkins -- the files that have the
versions really must have the versions, and we do what we can to
minimize the dependencies (e.g. the VERSION variable in configure.in
gets propagated to the Makefile).

Like Knuth says in his explanation of how "The Art Of Computer
Programming" is typeset, the start of a new chapter is such a major
event that there's no macro for it -- he types it in himself.  (Most
other typing is done by typists of course.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)