mkVers

mkVers was a tiny PicoLisp script from the 2010s source tree. It stamped the current version into the C header vers.h, so that the C interpreter (pil32) reported the same version as the 64-bit one (pil64). I studied it in 2017; this page is updated for 2026.

What it did

#!../bin/picolisp ../lib.l
# 07mar11abu
# (c) Software Lab. Alexander Burger

(load "../src64/version.l")

(out "vers.h"
   (prinl
      "static byte Version[4] = {"
      (glue "," *Version)
      "};" ) )

(bye)

# vi:et:ts=3:sw=3

The shebang runs ../bin/picolisp with ../lib.l. Back then the interpreter binary and the base library were given explicitly. Today that is the job of the pil wrapper script.
(load "../src64/version.l") read the single source of truth, *Version, from the pil64 tree.
(out "vers.h" ...) redirected output into the header file, and glue joined the numbers with commas: (17 6 13) became 17,6,13.

It is a neat example of PicoLisp as a build tool: five lines of Lisp generating C.

What happened to it

pil21 has no mkVers. There is no C interpreter left to stamp. The version lives directly in src/vers.l as (pico~de *Version 26 9 25), which the LLVM build compiles straight into the binary. One file, nothing generated. See vers.h.

The same trick is still useful in your own projects:

(out "version.h"
   (prinl "#define APP_VERSION \"" (glue "." (version T)) "\"") )

On 26.9 that writes #define APP_VERSION "26.9.25".