Various build improvements

[benesch]

See commit messages.

---

This change is 

[tamird]

---

Reviewed 1 of 1 files at r1, 1 of 1 files at r2.
Review status: all files reviewed at latest revision, 1 unresolved discussion.

---

build/cockroach.rb, line 8 at r1 (raw file):

  url "https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach.git",
      :tag => "beta-20170223",
      :revision => "4c8949513d287b92be1c167615398a2a53fe39da"

i think there was a reason for this. care to dig through the git log?

cc @mberhault

---

Comments from Reviewable

[mberhault]

does this work?

[mberhault]

dunno, I have no little to no experience with homebrew. I've never tried to install cockroach through it

[benesch]

@tamird @mberhault specifying both tag and revision dates back to Peter's commit to add the Homebrew recipe, so I assume it's just historical happenstance. Homebrew is perfectly happy with just a tag; it uses the revision, if specified alongside a tag, to verify the revision pointed to by the tag is what the formula expects (source).

This functionality exists to prevent upstream Git committers from force-pushing a tag and changing the code a core Homebrew formula points at; since we control both the repository and the formula, I don't think we need the extra verification. If our tags are force-pushed we've got other problems. Plus I'm hoping to eventually switch over to tarball sources per #14031.