GDB Internals

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GDB Internals

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15.1.1 Version Identifiers

GDB's version is determined by the file `gdb/version.in'.

GDB's mainline uses ISO dates to differentiate between versions. The CVS repository uses YYYY-MM-DD-cvs while the corresponding snapshot uses YYYYMMDD.

GDB's release branch uses a slightly more complicated scheme. When the branch is first cut, the mainline version identifier is prefixed with the major.minor from of the previous release series but with .90 appended. As draft releases are drawn from the branch, the minor minor number (.90) is incremented. Once the first release (M.N) has been made, the version prefix is updated to M.N.0.90 (dot zero, dot ninety). Follow on releases have an incremented minor minor version number (.0).

Using 5.1 (previous) and 5.2 (current), the example below illustrates a typical sequence of version identifiers:

5.1.1: final release from previous branch
2002-03-03-cvs: main-line the day the branch is cut
5.1.90-2002-03-03-cvs: corresponding branch version
5.1.91: first draft release candidate
5.1.91-2002-03-17-cvs: updated branch version
5.1.92: second draft release candidate
5.1.92-2002-03-31-cvs: updated branch version
5.1.93: final release candidate (see below)
5.2: official release
5.2.0.90-2002-04-07-cvs: updated CVS branch version
5.2.1: second official release

Notes:

Minor minor minor draft release candidates such as 5.2.0.91 have been omitted from the example. Such release candidates are, typically, never made.
For 5.1.93 the bziped tar ball `gdb-5.1.93.tar.bz2' is just the official `gdb-5.2.tar' renamed and compressed.

To avoid version conflicts, vendors are expected to modify the file `gdb/version.in' to include a vendor unique alphabetic identifier (an official GDB release never uses alphabetic characters in its version identifer).

Since GDB does not make minor minor minor releases (e.g., 5.1.0.1) the conflict between that and a minor minor draft release identifier (e.g., 5.1.0.90) is avoided.