freerdp/docs/version_detection.md

As FreeRDPs is build on different OS with different build tools and methods the "version detection" has grown historically. This document quickly describes how it's currently used.

When doing a xfreerdp /version for example the following is shown

This is FreeRDP version 3.0.0-dev (c99c4cecddee4e5b914b122bc1531d47a668bb8e)

The first part ist the Version as defined in RAW_VERSION_STRING and the second part, in braces, the GIT_REVISON of this version.

RAW_VERSION_STRING is very vital as it determines the version used for libraries as well also for all sub-projects as WinPR.

As default both variables are equal.

For nightly or development builds it is often of advantage to have the actual version from git instead of having the hard coded value set in CMakeLists.txt. For this the cmake variable USE_VERSION_FROM_GIT_TAG can be set. In order for this to work you need a) source checkout and b) git command line utility. If enabled the information from the last git tag (in the format major.minor.patch-extra like 2.6.0-android12) will be used.

If you are building FreeRDP and can't use git because it's not available or the source is not in an git repository - for example when building packages - the files .source_tag and .source_version in the top-level source directory can be used. .source_tag is equal to RAW_VERSION_STRING and need to contain the version in the same format as the git tag. .source_version is used to pre-fill GIT_REVISON. Although mostly used for that it must not contain a git commit or tag - it can be used to set additional arbitrary information. Our recommendation for packagers is to create .source_version when importing and set it to the upstream commit or tag to simplify issue tracking.

As summary the different mechanisms are applied in that order:

• .source_tag and .source_version if found
• version set from the last git tag if RAW_VERSION_STRING is set
• hard coded version in CMakeLists.txt