Subject: bug#42212: [PATCH 1/1] self: Use nearest tag as the version string in documentation.

From: Arun Isaac <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2020 14:06:48 +0530

> I would rather not call out to ‘git-version-gen’ and instead use (git
> describe) or similar.

Sure, I'll do that. Then, perhaps we should even rewrite git-version-gen
using (git describe). It would be nice to have that in guile too. WDYT?

> However, unless I’m mistaken, the output of ‘git-version-gen’ changes at
> each commit, so we’d be rebuilding the manual at every commit, which is
> what we should avoid here.

Yes, but I discard the commit part of git-version-gen's output. I keep
only the tag part.

But, like zimoun, I didn't understand why we can't rebuild the manual
every commit. Rebuilding the manual is quite cheap. So, substituting it
shouldn't be a problem, right?

> One way to avoid that would be to look at the latest commit that touch
> doc/ instead of the latest commit overall (I think that’s what zimoun
> was suggesting).  Roughly run ‘git describe’ on ‘git log doc/’, so to
> speak.  (Using Guile-Git.)

This sounds good. I'll try it and get back to you.