-v || --version should show current version of tool

[Jamie Bennett]

Downloading the current version as of 2011-01-28 linaro-media-create does not show the tools version number when invoking a -v or --version. This would be useful for debugging purposes and to ensure you have the correct version installed.

[Mattias Backman (mabac)]

Seems like this is a widely requested feature.

What would the --version option show when l-m-c is run from a bzr checkout?
When installed as a package, probably should print the package version?

[Fathi Boudra (fboudra)]

--version should show the version as available in setup.py.

as you do a post release bump, --version should show YYYY.MM.1. a better distinction will be to add a devel string.
e.g. version="2011.09.1 (devel)"

when installed as a package, common practice is to use upstream version, not the package version.

Though some package include packaging version like QEMU or GCC:
$ qemu-x86_64-static --version
qemu-x86_64 version 0.14.1 (Debian 0.14.1+dfsg-3), Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard

For QEMU, it's passed at build time using --with-pkgversion=

IMO, we don't need the packaging version. It can be revisited later if we want it.

[Mattias Backman (mabac)]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 8:42 AM, Fathi Boudra <email address hidden> wrote:
> --version should show the version as available in setup.py.

That's easy for the case where the user runs l-m-c from a bzr branch,
but that's probably the case where the -v option is least needed. The
setup.py file is not available in the package, so we need to carry the
version info into the package somehow. Is there a standard way of
doing this?

>
> as you do a post release bump, --version should show YYYY.MM.1. a better distinction will be to add a devel string.
> e.g. version="2011.09.1 (devel)"

Yeah why not; the '.1' worked better in the 0.4.x version scheme.

>
> when installed as a package, common practice is to use upstream version,
> not the package version.

[Fathi Boudra (fboudra)]

On 30 September 2011 15:09, Mattias Backman <email address hidden> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 8:42 AM, Fathi Boudra <email address hidden> wrote:
>> --version should show the version as available in setup.py.
>
> That's easy for the case where the user runs l-m-c from a bzr branch,
> but that's probably the case where the -v option is least needed. The
> setup.py file is not available in the package, so we need to carry the
> version info into the package somehow. Is there a standard way of
> doing this?

yes, the standard way is to create e.g. __version__.py in your source tree.
The file will contain a single line: __version__ = "2011.09.1 (devel)"
Then in your setup.py, open that file and parse out the version.
__version__.py is distributed with the package and can be used for the
--version option.