Re: EMC version numbers

[Ray <rehenry-at-up.net>]

On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, Fred wrote:
<massive snip->

> In Tcl/Tk, try this:

I wrote this up as a console script and it works great.  I'll make a
cascade under help that shows the result of each command and also writes a
file with all of the results so that we have a text file to share amongst
ourselves with all of the machine specific stuff.  If there are no
objections, I'll label it "info."

<massive snip> 

> How about we create a file, "emcversion", in the emc/ directory created
> by the install, that contains for example
> 
> 29-Feb-2000
> 
> We could also give the whole release a version number, like 1.23, which
> we would use instead of the DD-Mon-YYYY release numbering. Thus, the
> next release would be started at say 1.1.0, and the release file would
> be emc-1.1.0.tgz. Installing this would create a file, emc/emcversion,
> that contains 1.1.0. The GUI could just cat this and pop up the version
> in a title bar or something.
> 
> Does this sound OK?

I really like the version numbering.  If we put a second line in
emcversion that indicates that this EMC came from an emcbin or emcsrc
tar file we could quickly plinpoint problems with machines, releases,
compilers, and distributions.

> On a related note, it's possible to pop up a GIF file when the script
> starts, and kill it after say 5 seconds. The GIF file would default to
> some EMC graphic with the version number, but you could make it
> anything.

A splash!  What a great idea.  We could make it a generic graphic that
the retrofitter or manufacturer could replace with their own.  I'll work
on a low res gif for this.  Or Dave Anderson had a great little
animated mill that threw chips and coolant all over.   Of course inventive
operators would replace it with the latest, uh "image" from their favorite
site.

BTW Some creative pacific rim programmer did this for the Mazatrol.  I
think that it was a T2 control that I saw it on.  The right parameter would
show a little crab climbing mount Fuji while the machine started up.

Sounds like I've got a days work cut out for me.  Thanks Fred.

Ray