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I recompiled pdfetex from p4 source.development, but even NEWS and README say about ver. 1.21a, the banner still shows

./pdfetex --version pdfeTeX 3.141592-1.20a-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.3) kpathsea version 3.5.3

the file pdftex.version is missing from pdftexdir (teTeX-3.0 has it, it just contains a "1.21a").

pdftex.version is automatically recreated if pdftex.ch is changed. If not, check the Makefile. Best regards, Akira