Avoid git during build

[pantierra]

Currently during build time git is being used to detect the version of tilemaker. However, when using a release package, it is not a git repository anymore and this command fails. It would be good to find an alternative. Here proposing just to set manually the version in the Makefile, but there might be better solutions to this.

[kleunen]

Maybe this can be done using:
https://github.com/brettdorrans/write-version-to-file

[pantierra]

I gave it a try, @kleunen. The limitation I see is that it "only updates the VERSION file within the CI container, so build tooling can then access this information elsewhere". However in my scenario, I really want to use the packaged files attached to the releases; to build tilemaker somewhere else.

Probably a simple, manual .VERSION file would be best. Or what would you suggest?

[kleunen]

ah, yes. Then somehow with an action when a new tag is created, this version file needs to be updated and committed.
There is this, but it writes a json file:

https://github.com/dolittle/write-version-to-file-action#example-workflow

Or maybe it should be part of the release build process, that the version file is generated inside the tar.gz

[pantierra]

Another option is using a git post-commit hook to create a (release) tag, when changing the version in a file:
https://coderwall.com/p/mk18zq/automatic-git-version-tagging-for-npm-modules

Which is the preference of the maintainer/s?

[systemed]

I'm not too fussed - the thing I like about the current solution is that it's effectively automatic, but good spot on the fail when using a release package. Post-commit hook sounds good if you understand it better than I do!

We'll need to include it in the cmake build (CMakeLists.txt) as well as the plain Makefile.

This also works, falling back to a date if it can't find a version, but might be a bit hackish...:

(git describe --tags --abbrev=0) 2> /dev/null || date +'%d/%m/%Y'

[kleunen]

Another possibility might be to create a small script for making a release. Which creates the tag and writes it to a file and commits the version file

[pantierra]

Yes, this is definitively not a big issue. I "fixed" it on my side with some other automatic foo that works in this place. A VERSION file, however it gets created and kept up-to-date would be a nice-to-have.

Closing here, as the code proposed is just not useful 😄