Embed git commit hash in a .Net dll

Issue

I’m building a C# application, using Git as my version control.

Is there a way to automatically embed the last commit hash in the executable when I build my application?

For example, printing the commit hash to console would look something like:

class PrintCommitHash
{
    private String lastCommitHash = ?? // What do I put here?
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        // Display the version number:
        System.Console.WriteLine(lastCommitHash );
    }
}

Note that this has to be done at build time, not runtime, as my deployed executable will not have the git repo accessible.

A related question for C++ can be found here.

EDIT

Per @mattanja’s request, I’m posting the git hook script I use in my projects. The setup:

• The hooks are linux shell scripts, which are placed under: path_to_project\.git\hooks
• If you are using msysgit, the hooks folder already contains some sample scripts. In order to make git call them, remove the ‘.sample’ extension from the script name.
• The names of the hook scripts match the event that invokes them. In my case, I modified post-commit and post-merge.
• My AssemblyInfo.cs file is directly under the project path (same level as the .git folder). It contains 23 lines, and I use git to generate the 24th.

As my linux-shelling a bit rusty, the script simply reads the first 23-lines of AssemblyInfo.cs to a temporary file, echos the git hash to the last line, and renames the file back to AssemblyInfo.cs. I’m sure there are better ways of doing this:

#!/bin/sh
cmt=$(git rev-list --max-count=1 HEAD)
head -23 AssemblyInfo.cs > AssemblyInfo.cs.tmp
echo [assembly: AssemblyFileVersion\(\"$cmt\"\)] >> AssemblyInfo.cs.tmp
mv AssemblyInfo.cs.tmp AssemblyInfo.cs

Hope this helps.

Solution

We use tags in git to track versions.

git tag -a v13.3.1 -m "version 13.3.1"

You can get the version with hash from git via:

git describe --long

Our build process puts the git hash in the AssemblyInformationalVersion attribute of the AssemblyInfo.cs file:

[assembly: AssemblyInformationalVersion("13.3.1.74-g5224f3b")]

Once you compile, you can view the version from windows explorer:

You can also get it programmatically via:

var build = ((AssemblyInformationalVersionAttribute)Assembly
  .GetAssembly(typeof(YOURTYPE))
  .GetCustomAttributes(typeof(AssemblyInformationalVersionAttribute), false)[0])
  .InformationalVersion;

where YOURTYPE is any Type in the Assembly that has the AssemblyInformationalVersion attribute.

Answered By – Handcraftsman

This Answer collected from stackoverflow, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5 , cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0