Storing Versions

Usually npm based packages, as Apache Cordova uses to distribute its components, store the version in a version field of the package.json file. For various reasons, some of Cordova's packages also store the version string in other locations:

Details

Platforms

• VERSION file in the root of the repository or native library. When a platform is installed, package.json is not copied over, so VERSION is used to find out what version of a platform is actually installed
• bin/templates/scripts/cordova/version (or equivalent script per platform) has another copy
• Platform specific:
  • Android
    • build.gradle has version or similar
    • .java file that has a CORDOVA_VERSION
  • iOS
    • CDVAvailability.h has two #define lines that list the version

Plugins

• plugin.xml, version attribute of plugin tag
• Plugins contains a tests “plugin” that has its own package.json and plugin.xml that has a synchronized version string as the main plugin

Automation

• Updating of these version strings should be automated and not a manual task
• updateRepoVersion method of cordova-coho contains a list of locations that are updated by tooling
  • https://github.com/apache/cordova-coho/blob/master/src/versionutil.js#L90
  • Also other method
    • https://github.com/apache/cordova-coho/blob/master/src/platform-release.js#L107