BUILDING FROM SOURCE

The source build requires Autoconf, a C compiler, a C++ compiler with C++20 support, GNU Make, and Pandoc.

From the project directory, run:

./configure
make

This creates the makefile, builds vbuild, and generates the vbuild.1 manual page. To regenerate the version source file before building, run make version first.

To install the program and manual page under /usr/local, run:

make install

Use make install DESTDIR=/path/to/staging to install into a staging directory.

NAME

vbuild - version builder

SYNOPSIS

vbuild [options]

DESCRIPTION

VBUILD is a version management program to increment a software’s version number and create an output source file that can be compiled and linked with the software so that the software can display the version number (and build date/time) to the user.

I have used it from a makefile target, such that I can run the command:

make version

The makefile target can be defined like this:

version:
	vbuild -i $(TARGET).ver -t version.c.template -o $(SOURCE)/version.c -major 1 -minor 2

An example template file is included with the vbuild distribution, the important point here is that the template file must have the strings <BUILD_VERSION> and <BUILD_DATE> defined, as it is these that are replaced by vbuild when it creates the output source file.

OPTIONS

-i [incremental version file]

Specifies the filename of the incremental version file, vbuild will create this if it doesn’t exist. The incremental version number in this file is incremented by vbuild.

-o [output source file]

Specifies the filename of the output source file.

-t [template file]

Specifies the filename of the template source file, vbuild replaces the strings <BUILD_VERSION> and <BUILD_DATE> in the template file to create the output source file.

-major [major version number]

Specifies the major version number, the version number is made up from:

	major.minor.incremental

-minor [minor version number]

Specifies the minor version number, the version number is made up from:

	major.minor.incremental

--pre-increment

Tells VBUILD to increment the version number in the input increment version file before writing the output source file. The default is to post-increment the version number.

-v

Prints the version information of the VBUILD program and exits.

-h

Prints the supported command line options and exits.