Re: org-assert-version considered harmful

[Bastien <bzg@gnu.org>]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com> writes:

> org-git-version is very useful when people report bugs.
> M-x org-submit-bug-report supplies org-git-version output for bug
> subject. Thus, we can easily check which git commit their build
> corresponds to.

Let's keep `org-git-version'.  If we manage to release Org more often
(minor and major versions), I doubt keep `org-git-version' will remain
that useful in practise, though.  Let's revisit the topic then.

> I am not very familiar with all the code paths our Makefile and
> autoloads take from setting ORG-VERSION to generating the appropriate
> Elisp constants.
>
> However, I do note that mk/targets.mk contains the following:
>
> ifneq ($(wildcard .git),)
>   ORGVERSION ?= $(subst release_,,$(shell git describe --match release\* --abbrev=0 HEAD))
>   ifeq ($(ORGVERSION),)
>     # In elpa.git, there are no tags available.  Fall back to using
>     # the org.el header.
>     ORGVERSION := $(patsubst %-dev,%,$(shell $(BATCH) --eval "(require 'lisp-mnt)" \
>       --visit lisp/org.el --eval '(princ (lm-header "version"))'))
>     GITVERSION ?= $(ORGVERSION)-g$(shell git rev-parse --short=6 HEAD)
>   else
>     GITVERSION ?= $(shell git describe --match release\* --abbrev=6 HEAD)
>   endif
>   GITSTATUS  ?= $(shell git status -uno --porcelain)
> else
>  -include mk/version.mk
>   GITVERSION ?= N/A
>   ORGVERSION ?= N/A
> endif
>
> Note that we already have a way to parse Org version from lisp/org.el,
> similar to what the commit you referenced does.
> It is just that this code path is not used by default.

I'd favor using it by default.

When using Org from the main branch of the git repository,
M-x org-version RET should return this:

"Org mode version 9.6-dev (release_9.5.5-822-g0a6a56 @ [load-path])"

> We can remove the current default and simply use
>
>     ORGVERSION := $(patsubst %-dev,%,$(shell $(BATCH) --eval "(require 'lisp-mnt)" \
>       --visit lisp/org.el --eval '(princ (lm-header "version"))'))
>     GITVERSION ?= $(ORGVERSION)-g$(shell git rev-parse --short=6 HEAD)
>
> all the time.
>
> I do not know if more involved fix is required (because I am not
> familiar enough with the relevant code).

Can you provide a patch for the above suggestions?  I'll test and see
if more fixes are needed, even though I'm also not that familiar with
the code either.

-- 
 Bastien