Eliminating NMAP_VERSION redundancy

[David Fifield <david () bamsoftware com>]

Right now the Nmap version string NMAP_VERSION is specified in two
different places: in Makefile.in, and in nmap_winconfig.h. The
NMAP_VERSION from Makefile.in is transfered to Makefile by configure,
and from there it is defined in the code using the -D compiler switch.
However, a common method of compiling Nmap on Windows doesn't use
Makefile.in or configure at all, so NMAP_VERSION is defined in
nmap_winconfig.h. This means that the version string has to be changed
in two places whenever it is updated.

The attached patch aims to eliminate this redundancy. It defines
NMAP_VERSION in only one place, nmap.h. The version string is extracted
from that file by the makefiles.

This technique is used in the GNU Make manual:
http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Complex-Makefile.html
(look at the shar and dist targets). I did some research and didn't find
anything more satisfactory. Some projects live with the redundancy, some
require using configure and make even on Windows.

I've tested the patch on Linux only. I need some Windows developers to
try building the code and making a distribution to see if it works. In
particular, try building NmapFE and doing a "make winbuild" in the
mswin32 directory, because those parts are sensitive to the version
string.

It's possible to add error checking for the version string extraction
using a rule like this (which the "all" target would depend on):

check-version:
        @if test -z "$(NMAP_VERSION)"; then \
                echo "Couldn't find a definition for NMAP_VERSION in nmap.h."; \
                false; \
        fi

This would uncover the error in case someone accidentally breaks the
format of the definition such that it can't be read by the makefile.

David Fifield

Attachment: nmap-version.diff
Description:

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