Git versions in AUR

Question

Let's say I want to install randompackage-git from the AUR. It has a submission date, an update date, and a long weird version number.
But I understand that the version number of that tarball is not necessarily the version number of the package. Somehow git gives me access to the latest version no matter what the version/update time on the AUR is, right? I searched for introductions to Git but found nothing dumbed down enough for a crude casual user like me.
Last edited by stozi (2014-02-05 02:54:48)

Answer 1

stozi wrote:Ok, life's short. So what then is the point of the aur package version number?
I suspect it's just that the package version number has always been a mandatory field and it's not clear that it should be made non-mandatory just because of github.
Probably, it would be a good idea for people putting code on github to give it a "tag" every now and again, which effectively imposes a notion of versioning, in which case the package version number would make sense.
Also, many projects on github are just small little programs that don't really need installing to the system /usr/bin directory; I have a $HOME/src directory where I often put small things from github; after compiling, the binary can be symlinked to $HOME/bin.
My philosophy on this is probably a long way from becoming an established convention, though.
Also, your thread title is not consistent with the content of your opening post. Your topic is about the relationship between PKGBUILDs and github projects. It is not about the internal workings of git.