Thank you! I'm not quite sure why the build succeeded with git missing, but in those cases using the prefix instead of the actual version is fine.

Thank you! I'm not quite sure why the build succeeded with git missing, but in those cases using the prefix instead of the actual version is fine.

The problem is not that the build fails. It succeeds. The problem is that it succeeds without a version number.

We can be in one of three situations:

1. git installed and there is a .git directory (like if you clone the repo).
2. git installed but no .git directory (like if you download the .tar.gz file from the releases page).
3. Same as 2 but without git installed.

In cases 2 and 3, ./autogen.sh will succeed even though the script git-version-gen.sh will fail. This causes the VERSION variable to be empty and so the Version: line in libgerbv.pc will be empty.

pcb2gcode has a requirement for minimum gerbv version so any gerbv installed from the .tar.gz file on the releases page will have no version number.

We suspect that the maintainers of Arch Linux and perhaps Ubuntu are using a download from the releases page to build the package that people download with pacman or apt-get, so they're getting a version that has no version number.

Anyway, this resolves it. If we made a new gerbv release and notify the maintainers, they can put a new gerbv into their package repositories and users will get the new gerbv with version number. I hope!

I think we should do a new patch release soon, before adding bigger changes. I'll try to make time this week but feel free to go ahead.

@eyal0 I have created the release v2.9.3-rc.1. Do know a way to verify whether this fixes the issue experienced by maintainers?

1. Download the .tar.gz files from the releases page. Don't do it in a git repo.
2. Decompress it.
3. Build the usual way.
4. Confirm that the generated file libgerbv.pc contains a version number.

Here are the commands that I typed to check it:

wget 'https://github.com/gerbv/gerbv/archive/refs/tags/v2.9.3-rc.1.tar.gz'
tar xvf gerbv-2.9.3-rc.1.tar.gz
cd gerbv-2.9.3-rc.1
./autogen.sh 
./configure
make -j 20
grep "Version" ./src/libgerbv.pc

I got:

Version: 2.9.3-rc.1

Looks good! The same commands on 2.9.2 do not make a valid Version:

Version:

Perfect. This ought to solve the problem. Hopefully the maintainers of the ubuntu and arch package will get around to shipping a new one soon.

Ubuntu shipped a new version in lunar I think... but I don't think the checks for git are enough. You may be inside a git working tree from some other project (the package maintainers) and as a result the .pc file will still not have a Version: marked properly.

https://packages.ubuntu.com/lunar/gerbv # I believe 2.9.6 build should have included your fix. Sadly the Version line is still empty there.

And it still doesn't have the fix. :-( I just unpacked that debian file and the version is not there. Oh no!

Is the maintainer, like... a human? Someone that we can talk to? I tried sending a bug report and emailing someone but I got not response.

@eyal0 I thought you are the maintainer

Nope. There are people that update the gerbv package for Ubuntu but I'm not that person.