Auto Version numbering your Android App using Git and Eclipse

Question

I believe that computers are the best things for doing repetitive tasks. I certainly am not, I either forget, or (mostly) don\'t do things in a consistent way - which isn\'

Answer 1

Idea (using ant and git executable)

ok, here's a novel way of doing it:

• for calculating version.code:

  git rev-list master --first-parent --count

  this follows the versioning guideline. As it effectively finds the number of commits from the initial commit (inclusive) which is always incrementing from the previous version.

• for calculating the version.name:

  git describe --tags --dirty --abbrev=7

Implementation:

build.xml usually imports a custom ant script called custom_rules.xml

so making the content of the script as:

    
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
            
            
        
    



    
        
            
            
            
        
    
    
        
            
            
            
        
    
    ${versioning.code}, ${versioning.name}
    
    



    
    

would just do.

In a nut shell, it just replaces the android.versionCode and android.versionName with the current version code and name, stored in git.

Caveats

• initial version code and name is set to 0 upon the completion of build. If you require it, replace the zero in the -post-build target, or (though I highly doubt you would require it) you could make it configurable and place it in some property (file or embedded; your choice)
• if the build is failed, or aborted, the version will remain as it is. (though i highly doubt it is of any concern, just revert the file!)

Enjoy.

Refs

• Best way to integrate Git with Ant?
• macrodef for git improvised from Ant Tasks for Git | tlrobinson.net blog

Important Edit

1. prevent using HEAD to calculate the build number; causes version downgrade issue when doing a build during development, and later when installing the stable version (or when doing a beta to main release transition). using the master (or the branch which is used for production builds) ref instead.

PS: relevant for AS users: Automatically versioning Android project from git describe with Android Studio/Gradle