Jun 23
How to automatically version a Flex application
I recently added automatic versioning to my Flex projects. This is quite useful when you want to know exactly which version of your application is currently running when it’s being debugged, deployed, tested, etc. This basic example will generate a version string containing a major version number, minor version number, svn revision number and a build number. The build number is incremented every time your application is built. It assumes you have python installed and use SVN as your version control system.
Storing your version information
We will use a simple text file to do that and we’ll call it .version. Its format will be:
major_no
minor_no
build_no
revision_no
Updating the version data
A small python script is used to do that. A build number is incremented each time and the revision number is retrieved from SVN. Here’s the versioner.py script (make sure it’s executable):
#!/usr/bin/python v = open('.version') major = int(v.readline().strip() or '2') # can change 2 for any major version number you'd like minor = int(v.readline().strip() or '5') # idem build = int(v.readline().strip() or '0') # idem build += 1 import os, re ri, ro = os.popen2("svn info", 'r') rev = ro.read() ri.close() ro.close() revre = re.compile('Revision: ([\d]+)') revision = revre.search(rev).group(1) o = open('.version', 'w') o.write("%d\n%d\n%d\n%s\n" % (major, minor, build, revision)) o.close()
Running the version script
If you’re using Flex Builder, this is easily done:
Go to project properties.
Under the Builders tab, click New
Name it anything you like
Select the versioner.py script in location
Select the folder containing your .version file as the working directory
Check “During manual builds” and “During auto builds” in the Build Options
Once your builder is created, make sure it’s at the top.
Using the version information
You can embed it in your Flex application using the following code:
[Embed(source="../.version",mimeType="application/octet-stream")][Bindable] public var version:Class;
and then you can access it at runtime using a function like this:
public function getVersion():String {var v:Array = String(new version).split('\n'); return v[0] + '.' + v[1] + '.' + v[3] + ' build ' + v[2];; }
which will return something like ‘major.minor.revision build’.
October 24th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
So, I tried all your steps except I made my script a shell script (running OS X here) and the script never seems to get called. I’m not sure if I’m setting my “Builders” up correctly or not, and there is little to no information about this aspect of Flex Builder on google, mostly because the name is too close to “Flex Builder” so saying “Flex Builders” is just completely drowned out.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:36 am
[...] found a great solution for this at denislaprise.com (thank’s for [...]
March 18th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Thanks Denis! Very helpful.
-Andy
August 10th, 2009 at 2:59 am
Thanks Denis for the idea… I have not Python on my Vista workstation, so I rewrite it (only the build number, not the SVN version mgmt) under VBS, which is onto every Windows, in a ‘buildnumber.vbs’ file :
Const ForReading = 1
Const ForWriting = 2
Set objFSO = CreateObject(”Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(”buildnumber.txt”, ForReading)
BuildNumber = objFile.ReadLine
objFile.Close
BuildNumber = BuildNumber + 1
Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(”buildnumber.txt”, ForWriting)
objFile.WriteLine(BuildNumber)
objFile.Close
Other steps are quite yours : write a “buildnumber.txt” file at the Flex project root, declare in Flex Builders (use C:\Windows\System32\cscript.exe as the builder executable, and ${workspace_loc:/PixSoftware/buildversion.vbs} as argument.
The only trouble I still have is that the counter goes forward 5 by 5 and not 1 by 1. As if the script was called several times per ‘Flex Build’…
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Great stuff! However, I did find that I had to split on “\r\n” to make it work… but invaluable information nonetheless!