Do something sensible with the Git Commit the in the About box

[smk78]

Copied from #2170

@butlerpd wrote:

the git commit in the "about" should probably be removed now that we are using versioning better? It was originally meant to be followed by the commit hash but only worked I think on one OS? and maybe only way way back at the dawn of time? As far as I know it has not worked for yonks and is thus useless -- unless somebody knows how to fix it.

[lucas-wilkins]

Now in #2164

[lucas-wilkins]

@smk78 Close this?

[smk78]

In the sense that 'something sensible' has been done - the Git Commit has been removed from the About Box as far as I can see - I guess this can be closed. But out of curiosity, if one wanted to know the specific build of SasView that one was running, how would one tell?

[llimeht]

I think that the git hash (and probably date) should appear in the version so that users and testers can answer that exact question: "which version did you test?".

I noticed @smk78 have that info the other day by specifying the artifact name the other day, which contains the hash. It would be better to have it in the About box too.

The date and git hash can easily be included in a pep440 version string. Tools like setuptools_scm and pbr exist to help with this. The version would be in the format:

{next_version}.dev{distance}+{scm letter}{revision hash}.dYYYYMMDD

A recent installer would then have the version 5.0.6.dev123+g987def3.d20221031. This tells us that's it's a dev version heading towards 5.0.6, it's 123 commits after 5.0.5 (ish), the git short hash is 987def3 and the date it was generated. When we get to alphas, betas etc then the strings become shorter.

[butlerpd]

That sounds exactly like was what was originally intended for exactly the reasons @llimeht mentions, but "we" never seemed to manage to figure out how to get the githash into the about box... if somebody knows how to do this that would be wunderbar from my point of view!

[smk78]

Seconded!