Why does it work? No clue! :) Why write it? So when we are handed a log from a user, we know what version it came from. That would be doubly useful if the daily builds munge the version with the build date (which I haven't investigated, so I don't know either way).
Obviously the version should be in the logs, and it currently is. Clearly I need to be more explicit:
Why write it instead of log it?
But I think I covered that in the rest of my previous reply.
I am not familiar with this "stdout intervention" of which you speak. How do I learn more about it (and turn it off)?
http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/repository/entry/chirpw#L35
The version should appear in log files regardless of the configured logging level. As far as I can tell, there is no way to do that with the logging module. Conversely, it should never appear on the console.
Can you please stop speaking so definitively? If we're logging debug messages to the console, then I definitely think the version belongs there. For example:
dan@eagle:~$ ntpdate -vq time.nist.gov 26 Feb 17:23:36 ntpdate[26448]: ntpdate 4.2.6p3@1.2290-o Sat Dec 20 11:46:51 UTC 2014 (1) server 128.138.141.172, stratum 1, offset 0.003841, delay 0.06700 server 2610:20:6f15:15::27, stratum 1, offset -0.007308, delay 0.16849 26 Feb 17:23:44 ntpdate[26448]: adjust time server 128.138.141.172 offset 0.003841 sec
Or
dan@eagle:~$ ssh -vv foo OpenSSH_5.9p1 Debian-5ubuntu1.4, OpenSSL 1.0.1 14 Mar 2012 debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: Applying options for * debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0 debug1: Connection established.
Further, if we're logging only info messages to a file, that's not going to be that useful for triaging an issue, so I don't think it matters one way or the other. The whole point of converged logging is to have the same thing (modulo the given level) appear in whatever log stream(s) we have.
Presently, the debug.log would only have contained that version string in the GUI (prior to my patches, which removed it).> If this is critical, I would say the best immediate solution would be to add it back in the GUI for now.
Ah, you're right, I didn't catch that you removed it and didn't add it back in that same patch. I've reverted that one.
--Dan