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 | grep "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.
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 grep 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.
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.