Re: [PATCH] configure: add git describe output to PG_VERSION when building a git tree

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
> * Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
>> So basically, this
>> would only be useful to people building production servers from random git
>> pulls from development or release-branch mainline.  How many people really
>> do that, and should we inconvenience everybody else to benefit them?

> Not many do it today because we actively discourage it by requiring
> patches to be posted to the mailing list and the number of people
> writing PG patches is relatively small.  Even so though, I can see folks
> like certain PG-on-cloud providers, who are doing testing, or even
> deployments, with various patches to provide us feedback on them, and
> therefore have to manage a bunch of different binaries, might find it
> useful.

I can see that there might be a use for tagging multiple binaries,
I just don't believe that this is a particularly helpful way to do it.
The last-commit tag is neither exactly the right data nor even a little
bit user-friendly.  What about, say, a configure option to add a
user-specified string to the version() result?
        regards, tom lane