`git describe`

[Clemens Lang]

----- On 29 Nov, 2016, at 12:14, René J.V. Bertin rjvbertin at gmail.com wrote:

> Right now I can only think of 1 important reason why Portfiles might want to
> check for the MacPorts version, and that's to detect older MacPorts versions.

In which case you're missing the other reason, that is detecting newer MacPorts
versions. I have used this in the past to write and commit a Portfile that
would not work with a released version of MacPorts.


> Wouldn't this feature plead for some form of synchronisation of macports_version
> in master with the one in the release branch? (How to handle the detection of a
> master pseudo-release version and compare it to actual releases is a follow-up
> question.)

You shouldn't try to extract information from a x.x.99 version number, so no, no
such synchronization is required. You can just use
  [vercmp $macports_version 2.3.4] > 0
to check whether a bugfix you need is available.

-- 
Clemens Lang