What is the best way to implement versioning of a binary?

Question

I am thinking of the following design:

static class AppVersion
{
     public static string BuildDate 
     {
       get; set;
     }
     public static string Version 
     {
       get; set;
     }
     public static string GetVersion 
     {
       get; set;
     }
}

A few questions on this:

How can I get the build date?
How can I print a date in a nice format?
How can I obtain and print the Visual Studio version in a nice format?
It is probably a bad idea to hard code the version into the binary, so I put the version into assembly information. How can I programmatically get it?

Please see: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/175256/what-is-the-best-way-to-use-assembly-versioning-attributes ... and ... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/199823/best-practices-for-assembly-naming-and-versioning — Shog9, Jun 11 '09 at 16:13

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 11 '09 at 15:20

I think your first questions are a matter of taste. You could use String.Format to get any style you want. Regarding your last question:

System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Version

returns the version number of the current assembly and:

typeof(SomeTypeInSomeAssembly).Assembly.Version

will return the version number of the assembly containing the specific type.

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 11 '09 at 17:30

1

For build Date look at http://dotnetfreak.co.uk/blog/archive/2004/07/08/determining-the-build-date-of-an-assembly.aspx

For the version / Get Version look at the System.Reflection.Assembly name space.

As for printing the date in a nice format, you'll want to either use the extension methods built off of DateTime class such as .ToShortDateString() or CultureInfo.

edited Jun 11 '09 at 17:30

CodeLikeBeaker

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answered Jun 11 '09 at 15:28

David Yancey

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 11 '09 at 15:40

We run all our production builds through CruiseControl.NET, which (among many other things) has the facility to version builds.

We then have a snippet of code that applies the CC.NET-generated build number (and other stuff) to AssemblyInfo.cs just before it's given to the compiler for building.

I suppose you could use a similar technique to insert the build date into a constant in some class somewhere in your app.

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

0

For build date or timestamp, you can embed it into the assembly when building.
For how to do that, see here.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

Community

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answered Jun 11 '09 at 17:42

Cheeso

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What is the best way to implement versioning of a binary?

4 Answers4