Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] GIT-VERSION-GEN: make use of git describe --dirty

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 10:11:40 -0500

Mathias Lafeldt wrote:

> Currently, GIT-VERSION-GEN invokes the plumbing commands "git update-index" and
> "git diff-index" to determine if the working tree is dirty. It then appends
> "-dirty" to the version string returned by "git describe".
> 
> However, as of Git v1.6.6, "git describe" can be told to do all that with the
> "--dirty" option, saving us the plumbing.

This has a minor downside, which is avoiding the nice version numbers when
building Git with git 1.5.6 installed.  What is the upside?