Jormungandr: Negate the Need to Manually Lookup Latest Release Tag

[ghost]

(re #1538)

Current Status

The README asks to manually lookup the latest release tag

Expected

Latest Release can be retrieved from the repo without the need to lookup manually

(this is standard-procedure)

Possible Solutions

• Provide a "release" branch (or "latest" or "stable" or similar, look for a quasi-standard)
• ~add a tag "latest" or "stable" (which serves as an alias to latest release. Again, look for a quasi-standard)~
• ~ensure that "master" branch is equal with latest-release~
• ?

Resources

Re "Stable" branch (contains diagram):

• https://gist.github.com/digitaljhelms/4287848

[mark-stopka]

curl --silent "https://api.github.com/repos/input-output-hk/jormungandr/releases/latest" \| grep '"tag_name":' \| sed -E 's/.*"([^"] +)".*/\1/'.

[ghost]

Shooting back:

git describe --abbrev=0 --tags

(but the issue here is to simplify/standardize things, so the solution is to provide a branch)

[mark-stopka]

@lazaridiscom, branches makes sense only in non-linear release cycles; Jormungandr has followed a linear release cycle thus far.

[ghost]

Let's just await what the project-lead decides.

[NicolasDP]

So we are not going to add branches and do this kind of development. There is no plan to have long maintained version so far (though it will be something else when we reach stability x.y.z with x > 0).

adding a tag (and updating it) to point to the latest release is not hard, and could help a bit. Though I don't see the point to do that. What is the problem you are trying to solve? The README says if you want to build a version instead of using pre-compiled binaries then you need to checkout to that version. But that's advanced, if you want to build it yourself I expect you can spare the 1min lookup to select the version you want to use?

[ghost]

Though I don't see the point to do that.

• manual steps induce errors => avoid whenever possible
• manual steps of 1min. cascade, leading to a (sometimes frustrating) user/dev-experience

Branch "stable"

Adding one (and only one) branch, named stable would be the way to go, even (or especially) now in early stages (see "hotfix"). Really nothing special.

• master: latest deployable development version
• stable: latest stable release

=> zero thought, zero lookup

Tag

better than nothing