Re: maint.mk: RELEASE leaking into VERSION

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Simon,

> Can someone think of a simple but backwards compatible fix here?

I don't think it needs to be backwards-compatible. The maintainers can
afford to change their habits from

  make release RELEASE='1.2 stable'

to

  make release VERSION=1.2 RELEASE_TYPE=stable

> The reason all this happens is this code in top/maint.mk:
> 
> # If RELEASE_TYPE is undefined, but RELEASE is, use its second word.
> # But overwrite VERSION.
> ifdef RELEASE
>   VERSION := $(word 1, $(RELEASE))
>   RELEASE_TYPE ?= $(word 2, $(RELEASE))
> endif

I would remove these few lines, and update top/README-release accordingly.

Bruno