# BuildInfo

© 2005,2007 John Abbott
GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

- Examples
- User documentation
- Maintainer documentation
- Bugs, Shortcomings and other ideas

CoCoALib Documentation Index

## Examples

- ex-BuildInfo.C
- ex-limits.C

## User documentation

The constant in `BuildInfo` allows you to find out which version of CoCoALib you are using. The function `BuildInfo::PrintAll` prints out all the build information on the `ostream` passed in as argument -- you should include this information whenever you report a bug.

There is one string constant which contains the version number of the library: it is of the form `A.bcde` where `A` is the major version, `bc` is the minor version, and `de` is the patch level. Note that there are always precisely 4 digits after the point (even if they are all zero).

- `BuildInfo::version` -- a C string containing the CoCoALib version number.

NOTE: if you happen upon a copy of libcocoa.a and want to find out which version it is, you can use the following Unix/Linux command:

        strings libcocoa.a | egrep "CoCoA::BuildInfo"

This should print out three lines informing you of the library version, the compiler used, and the compiler flags used when creating libcocoa.a.

## Maintainer documentation

I chose to put the constants and function in their own namespace to emphasise that they go together.

There are actually four string constants, but only one is supposed to be publicly accessible (because I cannot imagine why anyone would want access to the other three). I made the constants C strings because it seemed simpler than using C++ strings. The three constants `VersionMesg`, `CompilerMesg`, and `CompilerFlagsMesg` contain the substring `CoCoA::BuildInfo` so that the egrep trick described above will produce the version/compiler information directly.

I made `BuildInfo::PrintAll` leave a blank line before and after its message so that it would stand out better from other output produced by the program.

## Bugs, Shortcomings and other ideas

The constants are not C++ strings -- is this really a bug?

Should the three constants `VersionMesg`, `CompilerMesg`, and [CompilerFlagsMesg] be hidden or public? Until someone convinces me there is a good reason to make them public, they'll stay private.