Display the current Git 'version' in PHP

Question

I want to display the Git version on my site.

How can I display a semantic version number from Git, that non-technical users of a site can easily reference when raising

Answer 1

Run git tag in terminal to preview your tags and say you got i.e:

v1.0.0
v1.1.0
v1.2.4

here's how to get the latest version v1.2.4

function getVersion() {
  $hash = exec("git rev-list --tags --max-count=1");
  return exec("git describe --tags $hash"); 
}
echo getVersion(); // "v1.2.4"

Coincidentally (if your tags are ordered), since exec returns only the last row we could just do:

function getVersion() {
  return exec("git tag");
}
echo getVersion(); // "v1.2.4"

To get all the rows string use shell_exec:

function getVersions() {
  return shell_exec("git tag");
}
echo getVersions(); // "v1.0.0
                    // v1.1.0
                    // v1.2.4"

To get an Array:

$tagsArray = explode(PHP_EOL, shell_exec("git tag"));

To sort tags by date:

git tag --sort=committerdate

Docs: git-for-each-ref#_field_names

For sorting purposes, fields with numeric values sort in numeric order (objectsize, authordate, committerdate, creatordate, taggerdate). All other fields are used to sort in their byte-value order.