Hi Peter, thanks for the feedback.

On 05/01/2012 02:23 AM, Peter Johansson wrote:
> Hi Stefano,
> 
> Sorry about this late reply.
> 
> On 04/28/2012 12:34 AM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> 
> --- a/bootstrap
> +++ b/bootstrap
> @@ -77,6 +77,8 @@ dosubst ()
>  {
>    rm -f $2
>    in=`echo $1 | sed 's,^.*/,,'`
> +  current_year=`date +%Y`&&  test -n "$current_year" \
> +    || { echo "$me: cannot get current year">&2; exit 1; }
>    sed -e "s%@APIVERSION@%$APIVERSION%g" \
>        -e "s%@PACKAGE@%$PACKAGE%g" \
>        -e "s%@PERL@%$PERL%g" \
> @@ -84,6 +86,7 @@ dosubst ()
>        -e "s%@SHELL@%$BOOTSTRAP_SHELL%g" \
>        -e "s%@VERSION@%$VERSION%g" \
>        -e "s%@datadir@%$datadir%g" \
> +      -e "s%@RELEASE_YEAR@%$current_year%g" \
>        -e"s%@configure_input@%Generated from $in; do not edit by hand.%g"  \
>        $1>  $2
>    chmod a-w $2
> diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
> index 22a158f..2829fd4 100644
> 
> 
> IIUC, this implies that if I choose to boostrap Automake 1.12.1, in say,
> five years, $RELEASE_YEAR will be set to 2017.
>
True, but it will be later be reset to 2012 when you run
"./configure && make && make dist", so no big deal.

Though, we might be even nicer, and make bootstrap.sh pre-processed
by "make update-copyright" so that the value of $RELEASE_YEAR will
always be correct, even in the bootstrap phase.  This is what I've
done with the attached patch (pushed to maint).

> I'm not an expert on what these copyright years mean [legally], but I
> find this a bit odd as nothing has changed the last five four years
> (depending on when 1.12.1 will be released). In my projects, I've used
> an approach that updates the copyright year only when something is
> modified according to the VCS. With subversion this is trivial and I
> suspect it wouldn't be harder with git. I store this information in
> a separate file, '.release_year', which is extracted at configure time
> although, in theory, it could be done at autoconf time, I guess.
> 
> Cheers,
> Peter

Thanks,
  Stefano