Add information on the About section of the client

[astorije]

This rewords current version string, adds useful links to the user, and displays whether the instance is running from a release or from the git repo.
This last piece will be very helpful to debug when users come asking help on the IRC channel.

From a release	From source

[astorije]

If git is not installed, then we will falsely report that this is an npm release. However, if this is a git repo, chances are git is installed, and is available to the user running the instance.

Alternative is to check if there is a .git directory, but this is much more complex (not trivial to find the hash of current commit by just exploring the directory, very error-prone!). It is somewhat not 100% reliable as well as one can have a git repo without a .git folder (well, I didn't know), though this case must be super rare. But who knows, maybe some servers centralize .git folders, as some do with Python virtualenvs?

Another alternative is to use a JS implementation of git, such as https://github.com/creationix/js-git, but then we're talking über-overkill and another world of issues incoming.

To conclude: not the most reliable, but the simplest solution without a doubt, and because of the try/catch, it will not break a server for various and random reasons.

[AlMcKinlay]

If git is not installed, then we will falsely report that this is an npm release.

Yeah, let's just ignore that. If someone has somehow got the git repository without having git installed, then we don't really care, as it's such a small thing anyway.

I think this solution is fine for what you are trying to do. The failure cases are so rare, and it's such a small thing (it'll just show it as a release rather than git) that it really doesn't matter.

[AlMcKinlay]

I'm guessing your images are the wrong way round.

[astorije]

I'm guessing your images are the wrong way round.

It was, thanks! 😅

[AlMcKinlay]

Great, that makes much more sense. 👍 then

[maxpoulin64]

Yep, looks all good to me. No need to go crazy about a JS implementation, reasonably safe to assume people running the git version have the git binary in their path. Worst case, it's the current behavior, so meh. 👍 and merging

[dgw]

Is this supposed to support instances running after npm install -g from the source?

npm start = git reference; running with my init script shows 2.0.0-pre.4 (but has features added since that prerelease).

[maxpoulin64]

@dgw: it tries to find if it is a git repo, and falls back to the version in package.json. If for any reason git fails, then it will display the npm version. My guess is that your initscript's working directory is not inside the repo, so git can't find it.