You don't have to do this. Just rename AboutDialog.ui to AboutDialog.ui.in, add it to the files to be processed by autoconf in AC_CONFIG_FILES in configure.ac, then set the version to @PACKAGE_VERSION@. For an example, see https://github.com/gnome-prototypes-team/gnome-music/pull/128 (data/gnome-music.gresource.xml and add_from_resource should still use AboutDialog.ui).