release version number not stated in assistant

[sebastian-s]

It should be possible to tell the assistant's version number. Preferably from within the assistant.

Reasons for this are:
  * the share might run a old version and needs to tell the helper which one
  * bug reporting
  * feature request, compatibility

I think this is particular important for the deb files which are most likely to be installed/used by persons in need for help.

[Andrew Sayers (andrew-bugs-launchpad-net)]

How would you feel about putting this in the documentation for versions of the assistant starting at 0.2? It would be useful for advanced users making feature requests, but the other uses should be handled automatically:

* In 0.1, send-with-bug-report.txt includes the MD5 sum of the file, whereas 0.2 will include the result of `bzr version-info` for the current revision.
* The first thing assistants do when they contact each other is to announce supported protocol versions. Aside from problems with the command-line interface being silently dropped in 0.2, the sharer and helper should never need to communicate this information to each other.

[sebastian-s (sebastian-s)]

I remember that we had this communication protocol version discussion some time ago.

Although there will be no need for different communication protocols I in 0.2 (or later versions) I still feel that a simple visible release number can be of help when providing support.

Just think of changes in the interface between e.g. 0.2 and 0.26. Hopefully both version will be able to communicate and 'work' together but the interface might be changed. With two people trying to help each other but with slightly different interfaces we are back to the problem of describing these subtle differences over the phone...

My suggestion is to include a version variable which will be updated when a new version is forged/cloned for release.

The developers will most probably work with the latest bzr version and will know where they are up to.

[Andrew Sayers (andrew-bugs-launchpad-net)]

That's a very good point about UI changes between versions. Since we're getting into fairly detailed discussions about these things lately, would you mind trying out where to put the version number? If you install the `glade-3` package, you can edit the main "interface.glade" file graphically. For now, I'd suggest you attach your "interface.glade" in here, and we'll talk about maintaining your own branch if this becomes a regular thing.