Proposal: getSystemAttribute(1006) - build ID

[tim Rowledge]

On 22-Mar-06, at 11:02 AM, John M McIntosh wrote:

> Andreas is talking about using a UUID which for all purposes is  
> unique. The hassle for the VM makers is that they need to remember  
> to change the string in
> the callback when they build and publish a new VM, and also in  OSx  
> add it to the bundle info.
I think that's what I said. To avoid manual hassle - and hopefully  
cases where a uuid wasn't set or worse yet didn't get changed - you  
need to incorporate as much of it as possible into the automated  
system. It's not difficult to use makefile rules to always compile a  
tiny file with nothing more than the time in it - see platforms/ 
RiscOS/vm/sqRPCVersion.c for example- and that is a sort of uuid  
analogue that changes with every compile/link.

Another possibility is a 'Genuine Official VM' site where the act of  
publishing a vm onto the site creates  a suitable uuid and  
incorporates it somehow. For RISC OS and OSX it would be trivial -  
write the uuid into a file inside the package bundle and the vm code  
reads that at need. For Windows it might be possible to run some  
program to comple the uuid file into the exe and for unix it would  
probably be simple since the server is likely to run some flavour of  
*nix. Development vms could include a default uuid file that declares  
them as unpublished and not to be trusted.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
when people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each  
other