GIT-VERSION-GEN: fix overriding GIT_VERSION

GIT-VERSION-GEN tries to derive the version that Git is being built from
via multiple different sources in the following order:

  1. A file called "version" in the source tree's root directory, if it
     exists.

  2. The current commit in case Git is built from a Git repository.

  3. Otherwise, we use a fallback version stored in a variable which is
     bumped whenever a new Git version is getting tagged.

It used to be possible to override the version by overriding the
`GIT_VERSION` Makefile variable (e.g. `make GIT_VERSION=foo`). This
worked somewhat by chance, only: `GIT-VERSION-GEN` would write the
actual Git version into `GIT-VERSION-FILE`, not the overridden value,
but when including the file into our Makefile we would not override the
`GIT_VERSION` variable because it has already been set by the user. And
because our Makefile used the variable to propagate the version to our
build tools instead of using `GIT-VERSION-FILE` the resulting build
artifacts used the overridden version.

But that subtle mechanism broke with 4838deab65 (Makefile: refactor
GIT-VERSION-GEN to be reusable, 2024-12-06) and subsequent commits
because the version information is not propagated via the Makefile
variable anymore, but instead via the files that `GIT-VERSION-GEN`
started to write. And as the script never knew about the `GIT_VERSION`
environment variable in the first place it uses one of the values listed
above instead of the overridden value.

Fix this issue by making `GIT-VERSION-GEN` handle the case where
`GIT_VERSION` has been set via the environment.

Note that this requires us to introduce a new GIT_VERSION_OVERRIDE
variable that stores a potential user-provided value, either via the
environment or via "config.mak". Ideally we wouldn't need it and could
just continue to use GIT_VERSION for this. But unfortunately, Makefiles
will first include all sub-Makefiles before figuring out whether it
needs to re-make any of them [1]. Consequently, if there already is a
GIT-VERSION-FILE, we would have slurped in its value of GIT_VERSION
before we call GIT-VERSION-GEN, and because GIT-VERSION-GEN now uses
that value as an override it would mean that the first generated value
for GIT_VERSION will remain unchanged.

Furthermore we have to move the include for "GIT-VERSION-FILE" after the
includes for "config.mak" and related so that GIT_VERSION_OVERRIDE can
be set to the value provided by "config.mak".

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Remaking-Makefiles.html

Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/Makefile b/Documentation/Makefile
index ff30ab6c42..a89823e1d1 100644
--- a/Documentation/Makefile
+++ b/Documentation/Makefile
@@ -181,6 +181,10 @@ endif
 -include ../config.mak.autogen
 -include ../config.mak
 
+# Set GIT_VERSION_OVERRIDE such that version_gen knows to substitute
+# GIT_VERSION in case it was set by the user.
+GIT_VERSION_OVERRIDE := $(GIT_VERSION)
+
 ifndef NO_MAN_BOLD_LITERAL
 XMLTO_EXTRA += -m manpage-bold-literal.xsl
 endif