[m-rev.] for review: Print version information on two lines.

[Peter Wang]

On Tue, 4 Mar 2014 12:39:32 +1100, Paul Bone <paul at bone.id.au> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 04, 2014 at 12:09:54PM +1100, Peter Wang wrote:
> > On Tue,  4 Mar 2014 11:28:36 +1100, Paul Bone <paul at bone.id.au> wrote:
> > > For review by anyone.
> > > 
> > > Branches: master, version-14.01-branch
> > > 
> > > ---
> > > 
> > > In the Mercury compiler itself, and in a number of tools we print a version
> > > string on one line,
> > > 
> > >     $ mmc --version
> > >     Mercury Compiler, version rotd-2013-10-01, configured for x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
> > >     Copyright (C) 1993-2013 The University of Melbourne
> > > 
> > > When the version number is sufficiently long, such as for an ROTD release, this
> > > will wrap on 80 column terminals.  This change splits these strings into two
> > > parts.
> > > 
> > >     $ mmc --version
> > >     Mercury Compiler, version rotd-2013-10-01,
> > >     configured for x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
> > >     Copyright (C) 1993-2013 The University of Melbourne
> > 
> > This change is entirely unnecessary.
> > 
> 
> Why is it unnecessary?  You should give reasons when stating a position.

Because you don't NEED to change it.  It only slightly helps human
readers who type mmc -v on a 80 char terminal, and somehow aren't
already used to seeing wrapped lines on a regular basis.

On the other hand, it is kind of nice for all the pertinent information
to be on the first line.  There may be scripts which already expect it.
I don't know if they exist and you could argue they shouldn't do that,
but if someone else changed *their* output for a trivial reason and
broke *my* script, I'd be pretty annoyed.

If we're going to change the output then perhaps it would be better to
just drop the word "configured"?

Mercury Compiler, version rotd-2013-10-01, for x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

Peter