When building from git, it can be useful to know which version
a user has at commit level resolution. When building in a git
repository, use git describe to generate a version string. If
HEAD matches a tag, use that. Examples:
$ ./svtplay-dl --version
0.20.2015.10.08-3-gbd75a67
$ git tag -a 0.20.2015.10.18
$ make
...
$ ./svtplay-dl --version
0.20.2015.10.18
make release is also adjusted, so that it overrides the version
value when building, so that official releases still only has the
tag.
pod2man will insert a date in the footer of the manpage. By default,
it takes this value from the mtime of the input file. But this makes
it non-deterministic in that another build may produce other results.
By setting it to always be the date of the latest release we make it
deterministic.
To build a new release, including tagging and commiting the release changes
(regenerate svtplay-dl, and update Makefile with LATEST_RELEASE), just do make
release. Obviously, the intended user of this target is the upstream author(s).
As part of the make release target, svtplay-dl will be unit tested and the
manpage will be checked to make sure all options are documented. All of this
happens in a local clone of your local repo. This is to make sure that no files
are left uncommited.
Finally, the changes necessary will be applied to your repo and a tag will be
set. All you have to do at this point is to verify that everything looks ok, and
then push master and the new tag to github.
