Comment 7 for bug 1791463

TL/DR: I suggest a new field is created with a "unique version" tag or dumping the hash/time altogether.

Bit of background: The VE field used to be "everything to identify a client or hub", which typically meant software had like "ABC 1.2.3" but others used "ABC v1-2-3." or some other format which made it impossible to generically distinguish software. Hence the AP field to at least split the application and the version. (Especially since whitespace wasn't unique enough to indicate "now starts the version".)

Regarding ADCH++'s use of the build hash (Mercurial hash) and time of day, is in my opinion not what the VE field was supposed to be. Now, the VE field (much like any other descriptive field) is up to the developer to decide on what to include, so when I say "supposed" I don't mean that the software in question is flat out wrong. I'm just saying "this isn't what we had in mind when we wrote that".

The hash (and time of day) is only relevant when we're talking about non-released versions. The hash of a released version of a software can be looked up, simply in their respective code repository. So the hash is really only useful when you're currently using a version that the developers haven't quite released yet -- basically this version is a development version/branch.

I would suggest a) creating a new field with more uniqueness (hash and time) or b) removing the hash and time because it's not really of interest except in special cases.