Get rid of VERSION file.

[bwplotka]

In order to do so we need to:

• Fix promu to handle this case automatically (take correct tag and if in main take tag +1 -dev
• Move out of promu to go-releaser or something (we already discussed this)

cc @simonpasquier

[bwplotka]

Related conversation: #4738 (comment)

[stale]

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[stale]

Closing for now as promised, let us know if you need this to be reopened! 🤗

[bisakhmondal]

I can make the changes. Just to be sure,

• I took a look at promu findVersion function which actually doesn't return the current version when I run into my CLI ( ref )
• same is true fir go-releaser

It is generated by git describe --dirty --always --tags, the format will be {Tag}-$N-{CommitSHA}

🔥➜ thanos git:(main) git describe --tags $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1)

v0.25.1
🔥➜ thanos git:(main) git describe --tags  --always --dirty                    

v0.24.0-137-g3026e58f

I am thinking about using git describe --tags $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1) from makefile and dump with output in (tag+1-dev) into the VERSION file. after promu build, we can delete it from the makefile. How does it sound? Thank you

cc @matej-g

[matej-g]

I am thinking about using git describe --tags $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1) from makefile and dump with output in (tag+1-dev) into the VERSION file. after promu build, we can delete it from the makefile. How does it sound? Thank you

Maybe I'm missing something here, why do we want to dump it into VERSION file?

[bisakhmondal]

Hi @matej-g, thanks for the reply. Actually, I was not sure How the VERSION file works in promu. So I looked up into the repository .promu.yml and it looks kinda promu injects the Version through go text/template ( -X github.com/prometheus/common/version.Version={{.Version}}).

From a quick glance to the promu source code, they use the following snippet to fetch the version of the repository.

func findVersion() (string, error) {
	for _, file := range []string{"VERSION", "version/VERSION"} {
		b, err := ioutil.ReadFile(file)
		if err != nil {
			continue
		}
		return strings.Trim(string(b), "\n\r "), nil
	}

	return strings.TrimPrefix(shellOutput("git", "describe", "--tags", "--always", "--dirty"), "v"), nil
}

ref1: https://github.com/prometheus/promu/blob/b1a2edae78614c8b0ae9e2faa88d14098e96f6d2/pkg/repository/info.go#L149-L159
ref2: https://github.com/prometheus/promu/blob/b1a2edae78614c8b0ae9e2faa88d14098e96f6d2/pkg/repository/info.go#L117

As evident from the snippet, it tries to run git describe --tags --always --dirty to capture the version in the absence of a VERSION file. But it returns old dirty tags (my last comment). The same is true for go-releaser (https://goreleaser.com/customization/templates/#fn:5)

So I was thinking if we get rid of the VERSION file, we need some way to provide the actual version and do the increment through some automated snippets because the default way is not sufficient. That was my preliminary research, it seems I am definitely missing a lot of things : ) Could you please help me clarifying how we are expecting to get rid of the manual versioning? As clearly, I don't have the full context here. Thank you.

[bwplotka]

Thanks for checking this! I think all you said makes sense, so it's a matter of either:

A) Sticking to #2028 when doing releases. This will make promu to work as intended IMO. The reason why it does not work now is that we never merge tags back to main (we merge release changes but not tag). See #2028
B) Contributing to promu to configure how promu finds version if we are not happy
C) Moving to go-release