Release tarballs on github produce empty version information about i3status

[eplanet]

I can confirm that issue. However, I see no easy fix, since the version is extracted during make phase from this git command:

VERSION:=$(shell git describe --tags --abbrev=0)

Maybe we could add a default value for the VERSION, like "latest" ? @stapelberg what do you think ?

[Airblader]

Maybe we could add a default value for the VERSION, like "latest" ?

But that'd just be a lie since release tarballs are far from "latest".

Any reason we can't use the same approach as for i3?

[stapelberg]

We should definitely use the i3 solution for i3status (and i3lock, FWIW) as well.

[eplanet]

@Airblader, yeah well, you get the idea, "latest" was just an example…

i3 approach seems reasonable but implies to update LAST_VERSION root file for each pushed tag, it gets complicated just to handle this case.

[Airblader]

yeah well, you get the idea, "latest" was just an example…

Even something like "unknown" (read: anything static) is bad because if the user reports a bug, there's no way of knowing which version they have installed.

i3 approach seems reasonable but implies to update LAST_VERSION root file for each pushed tag, it gets complicated just to handle this case.

We don't release often, i3status even much more rarely than i3, so I don't see an issue with that. For i3 this is even scripted.