Retrieving application version number in mix.exs from git describe

mix.exs

defmodule MyApp.Mixfile do
  use Mix.Project

  def project do
    [app: :my_app,
     version: get_version,
     elixir: "~> 1.0",
     elixirc_paths: elixirc_paths(Mix.env),
     compilers: Mix.compilers,
     build_embedded: Mix.env == :prod,
     start_permanent: Mix.env == :prod,
     deps: deps]
  end

  # Configuration for the OTP application
  #
  # Type `mix help compile.app` for more information
  def application do
    [mod: {MyApp, []},
     applications: [:logger]]
  end

  defp get_version do
    version_from_file
    |> handle_file_version
    |> String.split("-")
    |> case do
      [tag] -> tag
      [tag, _num_commits, commit] -> "#{tag}-#{commit}"
    end
  end

  defp version_from_file(file \\ "VERSION") do
    File.read(file)
  end

  defp handle_file_version({:ok, content}) do
    content
  end
  defp handle_file_version({:error, _}) do
    retrieve_version_from_git
  end
  defp retrieve_version_from_git do
    require Logger
    Logger.warn "Calling out to `git describe` for the version number. This is slow! You should think about a hook to set the VERSION file"
    System.cmd("git", ["describe", "--always", "--tags"]) 
    |> Tuple.to_list 
    |> List.first 
    |> String.strip
  end

  # Specifies which paths to compile per environment
  defp elixirc_paths(:test), do: ["lib", "web", "test/support"]
  defp elixirc_paths(_),     do: ["lib", "web"]

  # Specifies your project dependencies
  #
  # Type `mix help deps` for examples and options
  defp deps do
    [
   ]
  end
end

post-checkout

#!/bin/bash
# installed to .git/hooks/post-checkout
`git describe --always --tags > VERSION`

post-commit

#!/bin/bash
# installed to .git/hooks/post-commit
`git describe --always --tags > VERSION`

git describe --dirty --abbrev=7 --tags --always --first-parent is also useful BTW:

• dirty if there are changes not committed/staged
• first-parent finds the closest logical tag if possible

e.g. 1.6.1-4-g95cb436-dirty

Wow--that is a very handy idea.

Please, please, please don't do it. PLEASE. You are now adding a system call via ports every time we need to load the dependency metadata. The Ruby/Rails community relied so heavily on it that it would add multiple seconds when booting Rails applications. Please don't do this.

@josevalim I updated with

• VERSION file set by git hooks
• warning about how slow it is if a VERSION file isn't there

Thoughts?

Thanks for this. I think @josevalim's point is valid, but your workaround here seems like a good approach. The one problem I see is with CI systems, which won't have the git hooks installed already. I wonder if anyone else has come up with a different solution to this? It seems like versioning based off git tags makes a lot of sense.

You could also change this:

System.cmd("git", ["describe", "--always", "--tags"]) 
|> Tuple.to_list 
|> List.first 
|> String.strip

to this:

System.cmd("git", ["describe", "--always", "--tags"]) 
|> elem(0)
|> String.strip

I merged the recommendations above, fixed the warnings about missing ()'s, removed 'v' and only changed one '-' to '.', so tags in the form vN.N work well with mix's SemVer check.

Given a tag like v2.3 then it will produce version "2.3", then after 5 extra commits produce "2.3.5-gitsha", optionally adding -dirty if there where uncommitted files (Officially this makes it a pre-release of 2.3.5, but since each commit increments the patch version, it isn't an issue).

  defp get_version do
    version_from_file()
    |> handle_file_version()
    |> String.replace_leading("v", "")
    |> String.replace("-", ".", global: false)
  end

  defp version_from_file(file \\ "VERSION") do
    File.read(file)
  end

  defp handle_file_version({:ok, content}) do
    content
  end

  defp handle_file_version({:error, _}) do
    retrieve_version_from_git()
  end

  defp retrieve_version_from_git do
    require Logger
    Logger.warn "Calling out to `git describe` for the version number. This is slow! You should think about a hook to set the VERSION file"
    System.cmd("git", ~w{describe --dirty --always --tags --first-parent}) 
    |> elem(0) 
    |> String.trim
  end