bug#42212: [PATCH 1/1] self: Use nearest tag as the version string in documentation.

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Arun Isaac <arunisaac@systemreboot.net> skribis:

>> I would rather not call out to ‘git-version-gen’ and instead use (git
>> describe) or similar.
>
> Sure, I'll do that. Then, perhaps we should even rewrite git-version-gen
> using (git describe). It would be nice to have that in guile too. WDYT?

Yes, but… one thing at a time.  :-)

>> However, unless I’m mistaken, the output of ‘git-version-gen’ changes at
>> each commit, so we’d be rebuilding the manual at every commit, which is
>> what we should avoid here.
>
> Yes, but I discard the commit part of git-version-gen's output. I keep
> only the tag part.
>
> But, like zimoun, I didn't understand why we can't rebuild the manual
> every commit. Rebuilding the manual is quite cheap. So, substituting it
> shouldn't be a problem, right?

Try rebuilding the manual + translations by yourself: it takes a few
minutes (see also commit a524a31de43b330c911fb08ae02fcd880d32aa04
related commits).

Also, if you don’t build it by yourself, you have to download its
substitutes, which is also not free.

So it’s really important to rebuild only when we have to.  (guix self)
is written in that spirit.

>> One way to avoid that would be to look at the latest commit that touch
>> doc/ instead of the latest commit overall (I think that’s what zimoun
>> was suggesting).  Roughly run ‘git describe’ on ‘git log doc/’, so to
>> speak.  (Using Guile-Git.)
>
> This sounds good. I'll try it and get back to you.

Thanks!

Ludo’.