Re: Comments wanted on an idea of changing the binutils version handling

[Joe Buck <Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot com>]

> > > objdump (GNU binutils) 2.12.90 20020307 (experimental)
> > > Copyright 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> > > This program is free software; you may redistribute it under the terms of
> > > the GNU General Public License.  This program has absolutely no warranty.

I wrote:

> > Why are you printing the copyright?  This is inconsistent with other GNU
> > tools, which just print a short one line string.  Because the string is
> > one line it's easy to use in shell substitutions.
> 
> Well, perhaps it is inconsistent, but looking at the GNU Coding
> Standards, Last updated February 23, 2002, we can read this:
> 
> ``All programs should support two standard options: `--version' and
> `--help'.
> 
> `--version'
>      This option should direct the program to print information about
>      its name, version, origin and legal status, all on standard
>      output, and then exit successfully.  Other options and arguments
>      should be ignored once this is seen, and the program should not
>      perform its normal function.
> 
>      The first line is meant to be easy for a program to parse; the
>      version number proper starts after the last space.  In addition,
>      it contains the canonical name for this program, in this format:
> 
>           GNU Emacs 19.30

OK, now that I try some newer versions of various GNU tools, I see
that there was a change made.  Older versions just print a short
version number, e.g. Emacs 19.29 prints "19.29.1".  The text above
suggests that the change was made around the time of the Emacs 19.30
release.

So, it looks like it is GCC that is out of step.  Should we change the
output of "gcc --version"?