Version naming suggestion

[dinkypumpkin]

> But this isn't about releases (at least in my mind) - hence the
> suggestion to add the commit date to the version number in git - so a
> release would have no commit date, interim patched versions would.

I would say that any version string should include the "git describe" 
output David W described in his response.  In general, the commit date 
wouldn't be very useful.  The get_iplayer repository isn't very 
volatile, so it doesn't make that much difference, but a commit hash is 
still more useful.

But would a more elaborate version scheme be worth implementing?  If 
you're not sure which post-release version you have, I think the message 
will always be: go download the HEAD version and be assured you have the 
latest and greatest.  For the very few people who want to track 
precisely which commit corresponds to their get_iplayer script, I think 
it's fair to say to them: clone the repo and use Git.

OTOH, automating the distribution of the HEAD version (incl. more 
precise version info) might make get_iplayer look a bit more 
user-friendly.  It could also provide a hook for the Windows installer 
to do post-release updates (though I now immediately un-volunteer for 
that job).

For the sake of argument, let's say you wanted to implement a version 
scheme for post-release versions of get_iplayer without requiring users 
to have access to Git and a clone of the repository.  One way I can 
think of to accomplish this:

You could create a cron script or Git hook to munge the get_iplayer 
script and make it available for download. Either would perform the same 
function: check out the latest revision of the get_iplayer script, 
determine the version string with "git describe" (or perhaps a keyword 
expansion Git filter?), write the version string into the script, and 
then place the script in a known location so that users could always go 
to a single URL to get the latest version.  This would have to run on 
the infradead.org server, so I'll leave it to David W to rule on the 
feasibility of this approach.

A rather hacky alternative might be to equip get_iplayer with the 
ability to update itself from the Git repository.  The commit hash could 
be written into the script and appended to the version number in the 
banner text.  Maybe I'll have a whack at that during my next redundancy. 
  Shouldn't be long now :}