Subject: bug#11356: automake 1.12 and (C) 2011

From: Peter Johansson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 May 2012 10:23:32 +1000

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. 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