Make sure FairLogger has a proper version even when doing development

[ktf]

No description provided.

[ktf]

@dennisklein @rbx under certain circumstances (e.g. if you download the tarball, rather than doing a git checkout) the GIT_VERSION of FairLogger seems to be set to 0.0.0, which then prevents FairMQ to work because it requires 1.8.0. This solves the problem, basically forcing the version from the outside, is there a better way of doing it?

[ktf]

Maybe the tag should be embedded in the source as part of the release process?

[dennisklein]

Maybe the tag should be embedded in the source as part of the release process?

Ya, this is an old question. IMHO, the git repo is a first class quality of our source tree and tools that still model source tree as just a single version tarball need to adapt and learn how to include the git repo. I would hate it a lot to duplicate version numbers in two places. (Also automatic commits are a no go.)

However, what we can do, is create a dist build target, that generates such a source tarball for backwards compatibility (and then generate and attach those as release assets). - Would this work?

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Just for my curiosity, in which environment/use case are you dropping the git history and why? (edit: aside from the example you already gave, in aliBuild I hope you have not changed the semantics to treat the git repo as first class entity, which would make me really sad, if you did ;) - imho it is one of the coolest features of aliBuild)

[dennisklein]

btw, the solution you propose in this PR I like even better than a dist tarball. In fact I like it so much, that I will make it a documented feature for fair_get_git_version which FairLogger does not yet use, but it really should and will in one of the next releases.

[ktf]

I just had a spurious tag in fairlogger, which confused the current command. The "tarball" behaviour was just to make a more general example. If you are saying this is the way to go, I am also happy.

[ktf]

(also notice github provides you tarballs automatically)

[dennisklein]

(also notice github provides you tarballs automatically)

unfortunately i find, i think this is a terrible feature in its current form. they are not even deletable :(