Re: Future of ident(1)

From: Steve Kargl <sgk_at_troutmask.apl.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2021 22:07:06 UTC
On Fri, Oct 22, 2021 at 03:51:15PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 22, 2021 at 3:30 PM Steve Kargl <
> sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu> wrote:
> 
> > All,
> >
> > With the new world order, what is the future of ident(1)?
> > Should it be removed from base?  Given a compiled binary
> > in base, how does one find the equivalent git info that
> > ident(1) used to perform?
> >
> 
> It is useful for some rare cases, but in general those cases likely
> can likely be handled by readelf / elfdump and adding build info
> to the files. I tendto think it's time to retire ident(1), but I'm in no
> hurry.
> 

I played a bit with objdump.  It seems currently a compiled object
and/or binary does not include a git hash.  I suppose this makes 
it only a bit more inconvenient to explore history.

> >
> > Having a few minutes to dust off old patchs for libm, should
> > I remove $FreeBSD$ tags in files I touch?
> 
> No. The current rule is that we're not removing $FreeBSD$ as we touch files.
> The plan is to remove it wholesale in the future. This gives maximum
> flexibility because stable/12 is still built out of svn and you never
> know what might get MFC'd there.
> 

OK.

> > For new files, is
> > it expected that useless $FreeBSD$ tags should be added?
> >
> 
> If you plan to or expet to merge the new file to stable/12, then yes.
> Otherwise omit $FreeBSD$. Most new files won't likely be merged to 12
> and even if you make an error in judgement and a new file without
> $FreeBSD$ is merged to 12, the impact is going to be minimal.

I have no intentions of merging anything.  I'll submit re-open a PR
and attach the updated to it.

-- 
Steve