Support tagged releases to track major versions

[mtlynch]

It would be helpful if vdesktop supported tagged releases so that users could see when there were major upgrades and what the changes are between versions. It would also make it easy for users to stick to a particular version instead of relying on a branch name like old-version.

This would allow you to get rid of the version file and do version checks like this:

Check local release version

git tag | tail -n 1

Check latest tagged release from Github

curl \
  --silent \
  --show-error \
  --header "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" https://api.github.com/repos/Botspot/vdesktop/releases \
  | python3 -c "import sys, json; print(json.load(sys.stdin)[0]['tag_name'])"

[Botspot]

OK I think I did it right. Would there be any way to put tags on older commits?

[mtlynch]

Yep, that's right. Github tells you to use descriptive titles, but I feel like that ends up being messy. I do it like this.

Would there be any way to put tags on older commits?

Yep, you can create a branch from an old commit and then tag a release based on that branch.

That said, I'm not sure that it's necessary. Tagged releases are a good way to communicate to users what's changed between releases, especially breaking changes. Are there legacy users who want to understand changes prior to v14?

[Botspot]

Yep, that's right. Github tells you to use descriptive titles, but I feel like that ends up being messy. I do it like this.

Good point.

That said, I'm not sure that it's necessary. Tagged releases are a good way to communicate to users what's changed between releases, especially breaking changes. Are there legacy users who want to understand changes prior to v14?

No there aren't. I was just curious if that was possible.