Firmware Version Visibility and Incrementing, How Do We Get Unambiguous Versions which are Never Stale?

[ForrestErickson]

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I'm always frustrated when I am uncertain of firmware version.

Two ways I have become uncertain.
One way when there is code in a device and I cannot see the FIRMWARE_VERSION
As a firmware developer, I am not sure how I know to increment the firmware.

The GPAD_API Version 0.46 in Main has the problem that it reports 0.46 and is different from what I think was a version made by Robert.

Another uncertainty.
When a code change is in review and is accepted and merged into Main, when and how is / was the version assigned? Issue 198 request a unique SoftAP address. It is in review. If Nagham and Lee review it what version will it be reporting (we have not yet tried).

If after testing and approve it and it is merged into main, what version will it report?

Will another branch merged into main at another time preempt the version numbering?

[ForrestErickson]

@TheBakedPotato
Can you review the Lee and Nagham how versioning is to be bumped?

[ForrestErickson]

Example of Lee's confusion.

Just now, 20260122 Lee switched to the merge request branch for Issue #198.

****

The code has come in still showing version 0.46

I expected the version to increment.

[TheBakedPotato]

Branch created: task/333-version-incrementing.

Not gonna create a PR yet, but the process is after a merge, or once a week, whatever we decide on, a new tag will be added with a release. We can discuss how we as a group update the version number, etc.

But the file pre_extra_script.py has been updated to automatically fetch the git tag.

[ForrestErickson]

Regarding, "We can discuss how we as a group update the version number, etc."
Do I infer correctly that prior to release deciding on a tag is a manual process. And that we will have to track / summarized the nature of the change associated with each?

This has me thinking that prior to release the code needs to report something identifiable but I cannot intuit what at the moment.
The old version plus the Branch number (truncated from the issue) or ?

[ForrestErickson]

Tags

I googled about github tags and learned this.

Semantic Versioning Summary