Thanks Jonathan!

Yes, I had commented out =(require 'org-install)= .

I'd taken the FAQ instructions for ELPA installations to apply
more broadly than they do:

;; Functionality of Org-mode's org-install.el is supplanted by
;; Package Manager's org-autoloads.el. Since Package Manager
;; autoloads Org-mode, the following line (require 'org-install) in
;; your .emacs is no longer required and can be safely removed.
http://orgmode.org/worg/org-faq.html


Now M-x org-version gives (correctly):

   Org-mode version 7.8.11 (release_7.8.11-16-ge67734
   @ g:/dev/bin/emacs/.emacs.d/org-7.8.11-dev/lisp/)

Thanks again!

-BC


On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 5:29 AM, Jonathan Leech-Pepin
   <jonathan.leechpepin@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I haven't had any issues with Org and Cygwin lately.  I did however
> come across this issue on a fresh install of Debian last week.
>
> I was able to resolve it by adding =(require 'org-install)= to the
> initialization (or calling it manually from the *scratch* buffer)
> before checking the version.
>
> Do you have (require 'org-install) in your initialization file
> already?  And if not does it fix the issue?
>
> Regards,
>
> Jonathan
>
> On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 1:15 AM, William Crandall <bc3141592@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I know this has been an issue:
> > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2012-05/msg00552.html
> > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2012-04/msg01144.html
> >
> > So I was glad to get Cygwin to make the current org-mode master (git),
> > seemingly with success. But restarting emacs brings up:
> >
> >
> > Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-function org-release)
> >   org-release()
> >   org-version()
> >   (if (fboundp (quote org-version)) (org-version) "(Unknown)")
> >   (format "Generated by Org mode %s in Emacs %s." (if (fboundp
> >         (quote org-version)) (org-version) "(Unknown)") emacs-version)
> >   eval((format "Generated by Org mode %s in Emacs %s." (if (fboundp
> >         (quote org-version)) (org-version) "(Unknown)") emacs-version))
> >
>