diff --git a/Makefile.am b/Makefile.am
index 5f841dd6..771bab46 100644
--- a/Makefile.am
+++ b/Makefile.am
@@ -49,6 +49,15 @@ line33:
 fixme:
 	@grep -i 'FIXME\|TODO' `find src -type f`
 
+# check whether we can run make distcheck from the repo version
+gitcheck:
+	cd `mktemp -d`; \
+	git clone git://gitorious.org/mu/mu-ng.git ; \
+	cd mu-ng ; \
+	autoreconf -i ;\
+	./configure ; \
+	make distcheck
+
 
 EXTRA_DIST=		\
 	TODO		\
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index 71099b42..f8e81a09 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ AM_SILENT_RULES([yes])
 # note that MU_XAPIAN_DB_VERSION does not necessarily follow MU
 # versioning, as we hopefully don't have updates for each version;
 # also, this has nothing to do with Xapian's software version
-AC_DEFINE(MU_XAPIAN_DB_VERSION,["8.0"], [Schema version of the database])
+AC_DEFINE(MU_XAPIAN_DB_VERSION,["8.99"], [Schema version of the database])
 
 LT_INIT # don't use AC_PROG_LIBTOOL anymore