serial number format

[Sam James <sam@gentoo.org>]

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Hi all,

For reasons once might be able to guess, I'm currently playing with
"known" M4 macros vs unseen serials and such.

At the moment, my tool uses the format described at
https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Serials.html.

My reading of it implies that the use in e.g. m4/build-to-host.m4
as '# build-to-host.m4 serial 3' isn't valid (I would expect "# serial 3
build-to-host.m4" or similar, closest analogue).

If I grep for serial in gnulib, I see a mix of both the format I
expected and this other format which uses the macro name too.

Are both formats valid (I know it's largely a convention)? Is there a
reason for the apparent inconsistency in format used within e.g. gnulib?
Is there anywhere else I should go read up on conventions for this?

I'll inevitably have to try deal with both formats as they will be in
the wild anyway, but got curious ;)

thanks,
sam

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