[Mono-dev] gmcs version #define

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 17:22 +0200, Stefanos A. wrote:
> According to the documentation, gmcs #defines the __MonoCS__ constant
> when compiling C# code. However, it doesn't seem to provide a constant
> that identifies the compiler version.
...
> Does this sound like a reasonable feature? Would it be possible to add a
> constant like "#define __MonoVersion__ 260" in some future version?
> (where 260 is gmcs 2.6.0, 281 is gmcs 2.8.1, etc)

The problem here is that C# #defines can't have values, so you can't do
`#define __MonoVersion__ 260`.  Instead, you would need to have a
"family" of #defines with the version encoded in the name, e.g.
__MonoCS_200__, __MonoCS_220__, __MonoCS_240__, etc., and I'm not sure
that would be very useful (as you couldn't have `#if __MonoCS__ > 260`
blocks, but instead `#if __MonoCS_260__ && !__MonoCS_240__` or
something, which relies on answering this: should gmcs 2.6 define *both*
__MonoCS_260__ AND __MonoCS_240__, or just __MonoCS_260__?).

My gut feeling is that this can't actually be solved easily within C#
source; you'd instead need to move the logic into e.g. make(1), and use
`#if BNC_XXXXXX` [0] in your source, and in your Makefile add
-d:BNC_XXXXXX if `mcs --version` is a known bad version.

 - Jon

[0] Why BNC_XXXXXX?  Bugzilla.Novell.Com with XXXXXX as the bugzilla ID
number.  Replace BNC with the appropriate bugzilla abbreviation, as
appropriate.  Great fun, and lets you know when you can stop using the
#define. :-)