> mame -help > MAME v0.172 (542-ga45d713) > ... > > Was this intentional? The build date was used by my front end on the titlebar.
Yes. It's showing the number of revisions since tag and revision hash that it was compiled from. The compile date is pretty much meaningless. In this case, the abbreviated revision hash is a45d713 and it's 542 revisions since the tag.