On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 9:18 AM Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, 8 Dec 2020, Zack Weinberg wrote: > > > > Yes, that’s intentional. Those files record information copied out of the > > git history. See build-aux/git-version-gen and maint.mk. > > I don't recall seeing "hidden" files in a GNU package (or really any > tarball distribution) before. It seems like the GNU coding standards > should be addressing such things. > > The files appeared in autoconf-2.69c and were not in autoconf-2.69b. This conversation should happen on the Gnulib mailing list; both git-version-gen and maint.mk are maintained there. I have no particular opinion about whether it is appropriate to use dot-files for this purpose. (Context that got trimmed off the top: Bob is concerned about the files named ".prev-version", ".version", and ".tarball-version" in the autoconf 2.70 release tarball.) zw