bug#74413: [PATCH] Allow to store and read repository information of VCS builds

["Björn Bidar via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Björn Bidar <bjorn.bidar@thaodan.de>
>> Cc: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>,  luangruo@yahoo.com,
>>   74413@debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2024 18:54:26 +0200
>> 
>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> 
>> > This is already available if Emacs is built in a Git repository, and
>> > the information is stored in the dumped Emacs.  So what is gained by
>> > also recording the repository version on a disk file external to
>> > Emacs?
>> 
>> The information is only stored if the worker already had git installed
>> and checked out the sources with git inside the worker.
>> Also the function currently fails unless the system the user uses also happens to
>> have git installed and the sources if the are installed also contain the
>> VCS metadata.
>> Storing the VCS metadata in the sources doesn't happen usually as it
>> increases the size of a good chunk. In my case e.g. from 188MB to 788MB.
>> Why not have the same feature for other platforms too?
>
> Sorry, I don't understand this explanation; I'm probably missing
> something.
>
> The feature you propose requires to build Emacs inside a Git
> repository, is that correct?  Because otherwise "git rev-parse" will
> not work, right?  If that is correct, then building Emacs inside a Git
> repository already calls this Git command and records the result in 2
> Emacs Lisp variables.
>
> So why do you also want to record the same
> information on a file?  What kind of scenario do you have in mind in
> which building Emacs with its current code will not record the branch
> and the revision, but your additions to Makefile will record that?

The additions to the make file are so that if the worker contains git
the file can be generated so that the related functions will still work
after the built or to generate them prior the built. The latter probably
makes less sense except to maybe avoid having autotools in the built
dependency chain.

If the Make recipe isn't used to generate the version file it can be
generated by the CI, e.g. in my case I take the information from the
open build source service. For others such as Fedora the sources can be
retrieved in a similar manner.

The file can be added before the built starts and package  so that the pdump
will contain the repository information and the VCS function will also
work afterwards.