return version even if not using git sources

[jonathanspw]

Downloading the source tarball from GitHub lacks .git structure and the version will be blank. This fixes it by using the directory name which contains the version.

This is currently impacting Fedora packaging, and potentially other distros if they use GitHub source tarballs.

Ref: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2277743

[wader]

Hi, could the problem be that the build downloads the github auto generated tag artifact "Source code (tar.gz)" instead of the proper source distribution "jq-1.7.1.tar.gz"?

$ curl -sL https://github.com/jqlang/jq/releases/download/jq-1.7.1/jq-1.7.1.tar.gz | tar t | grep version.h
jq-1.7.1/src/version.h
$ curl -sL https://github.com/jqlang/jq/archive/refs/tags/jq-1.7.1.tar.gz | tar t | grep version.h
$

[jonathanspw]

Yes, "Source code (tar.gz)" is precisely what we use for sources in the Fedora package.

[wader]

Ok, could you try use "jq-1.7.1.tar.gz" instead? the other one is automatically added by github and it is currently not possible to disable or hide :(

[jonathanspw]

Is there any real reason to do so other than this bug? Generally speaking I try to use the auto generated source tarballs where possible, and other than this issue, it works fine for jq.

[wader]

I see, no reason really, so a fallback would be fine with me. Let's see what @nicowilliams, @itchyny other maintainers think about it.

[jonathanspw]

I believe even if using those sources that an autoreconf might wipe out the version stuff, so I'm going to test that and potentially expand this fallback to properly support directory names jq-<version> and jq-jq-<version> if necessary.

Please do not merge yet.

[wader]

👍 no worries, will wait for at least one more maintainer agrees and has reviewed

[jonathanspw]

The issue indeed exists even in the CI-generated tarballs that if you autoreconf for whatever reason it wipes out the version info.

$ ./jq --version
jq-

Committed a fix to deal with this as well, just updated regex.

[wader]

If you fix that i guess we can also remove the "skip the autoreconf step" from https://github.com/jqlang/jq?tab=readme-ov-file#instructions?

[jonathanspw]

We do autoreconf in Fedora without any other known side effects, so without it breaking the version stuff I guess it should be safe.

[itchyny]

The auto-generated tarball does not include the oniguruma submodule, so it requires system oniguruma library for regex filters support. Since we distribute archives (both tarball and zip) for distributors including the version and the oniguruma submodule (version of which we test), we recommend to use them. Also, using the directory name for version hint looks a bit weird to me. And /bin/sh is not always Bash.