we now have three files to keep in sync. That seems wrong, but I guess
we will live with it for now.
The main problem is that the python code is distributed separately, so
it can't get the version from 'version'.
The choice ~rcX is for convenience with debian versioning.
The big change here is the support for maildir-flag synchronization.
But there are a number of other thigns as well---library support for
multiple filenames, new ruby bindings, improvements to the vim
interface, and a few tweaks to the emacs interface.
We do this so that "git archive" produces a usable tar file without us
having to post-modify it, (since tools like git-buildpackage might not
give us an easy way to hook into the tar-file-creation step).
To support this we also have to change our preference to prefer the
git-described-based version (if available) and only if not available
do we fallback to using what's in the "version" file. Finally, we also
ovverride this preference when releasing, (where what's in the
"version" file wins).
Note that using our Makefile's rule to create a tar file still will
insert the git-based version into the tar file. This is useful for
creating snapshots which will correctly report the git version from
which they were created.
