Stamp It! All Programs Must Report Their Version

Stamps are nice, but git and friends miss something that the VCS of yore would give you - a monotonously increasing number you could stick somewhere in your version - and be able to tell at a glance which was newer.

2.4.16-12 vs 2.4.16-35 - obviously -35 is later.

But 2.4.16-bcbd1c6 vs 2.4.16-d645104 - which is later? Compile dates won't necessarily help because "earlier" code could have been compiled later.

It's forcing the versioning to do something it shouldn't, arguably, but is nice to have something that the user can decipher (even if you still should have the commit).

> --moreversion

Suggestion: more conventional and intuitive would be: --version --verbose

This is not really a huge issue.

Most commercial software gives you a detailed version report.

Either way, the simplest solution would be -v, and -vv and -vvv … don’t do moreversion or lessversion.

The equivalent would be —version —version —version.

The version seems to be the number one information in order to avoid making things worse! Not all solutions apply to all versions of a running product.

Great post! I propose all programs have a `--version` flag. Anything similar for Rust + Cargo right now?

Dang please mark this post for boosting?