Eclipse Version tagging

Question

I am developing an Android App by myself. Using Eclipse. I did not defined any repository on the web, nor am I using CVS (there is no team). I have all the code sources locally on my computer.

How do I go about tagging the current source with a version number?
Is it customary to tag once when stable and again when ready for release?

Answer 1

I would strongly recommend using some sort of version control. You can get a free account on github and store your code there. But using version control is independent of how you use versions in your plugin.

This link contains the Eclipse guidelines for versioning:

http://wiki.eclipse.org/Version_Numbering

To summarize:

1. Pre-release, use something like 0.x.x.qualifier
2. First major release will be 1.0.0.qualifier
3. bump up the micro version (third number) for bug fixes 4, bump up the minor version (second number) for new functionality that maintains backwards compatibility
4. bump up the major version for big changes that break compatibility
5. The qualifier should be converted to a unique id by the build process. Typically, it is some variant of a timestamp.

Answer 2

You don't. The Local History in Eclipse is not a substitute for a real source control management system.

Answer 3

I agree with @Andrew that it's worth adding your code to a version control system. If you aren't comfortable with placing it on github, you can still use git in a local git repo so your code is source controlled.

@Andrew also mentioned the breakdown of plugin and feature version numbers. When building headless with PDE Build or exporting through the PDE UI, you can at build time change the qualifier part of the version. It's an option in the PDE export wizard, and for a PDE headless build with no source control can be overridden with forceContextQualifier in the build.properties file.