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

[adding the GDB group, as this affects both]

> What is the meaning of "Automatic date update in version.in" commits?
> I mean commits like f625a739e5.
> 
> This commits litter commits tree and create problems for  	
> deterministic, bit-identical and/or verifiable builds.
> 
> May be worth to remove this (historical?) artifact?

We've had that discussion several times in the past. I'd be quite
happy to get rid of that daily commit, and most people here probably
would be too. The issue is that no one has been able to get us
to agree on what we should be doing instead, and then implement it.
Part of the obstacles, I think, is that everyone has their own idea
of the requirements that should be met. Maybe one solution would be
to ask the group of Global Maintainers to make a decision (at least
for GDB) once everyone had a chance to provide their feedback. Once
we have a clear plan of what should be done, I suspect finding
a volunteer to implement it wouldn't be too hard. I might even
take an hour or two in a weekend to look into that...

-- 
Joel