Stamp It! All Programs Must Report Their Version

37 points
1/21/1970
2 days ago
by secure

Comments


bombcar

Stamps are nice, but git and friends miss something that the VCS of yore would give you - a monotonously increasing number you could stick somewhere in your version - and be able to tell at a glance which was newer.

2.4.16-12 vs 2.4.16-35 - obviously -35 is later.

But 2.4.16-bcbd1c6 vs 2.4.16-d645104 - which is later? Compile dates won't necessarily help because "earlier" code could have been compiled later.

It's forcing the versioning to do something it shouldn't, arguably, but is nice to have something that the user can decipher (even if you still should have the commit).

2 days ago

planteur

The blog post mentions `git describe`, which includes the revision number (since last annotated tag), e.g. "4.25-23-g98f23f54".

a day ago

sgbeal

> --moreversion

Suggestion: more conventional and intuitive would be: --version --verbose

2 days ago

bombcar

I took it to be more like "The answer? Use --version. And if that don't work, use --moreversion."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNgNBsCI4EA

2 days ago

ploution

The version seems to be the number one information in order to avoid making things worse! Not all solutions apply to all versions of a running product.

2 days ago

deafpolygon

This is not really a huge issue.

Most commercial software gives you a detailed version report.

Either way, the simplest solution would be -v, and -vv and -vvv … don’t do moreversion or lessversion.

The equivalent would be —version —version —version.

a day ago

sourcegrift

Dang please mark this post for boosting?

a day ago

sourcegrift

Great post! I propose all programs have a `--version` flag. Anything similar for Rust + Cargo right now?

a day ago

sourcegrift

I meant `--stamp` lol

a day ago