If you are using a VERSION-file to give your new (or old) cool software tool a version, you maybe also want to display it in the footer of the website or in the help command option of your CLI.

Instead of writing stuff like this

def version
  @version ||= File.open('VERSION', 'rb') { |f| f.read }.strip
end

you could use version_reader (written by me) which reads the VERSION-file and does all the stripping and formatting for you.

Version Reader is just a small wrapper around the VERSION-file.

Let’s do a short example. Imagine that your VERSION-file is in ~/MyApp/ with the content 0.4.2\n. Load the version with the following code:

require 'version_reader'

version_reader = VersionReader.new('~/MyApp/VERSION')

Now, you can display a nicely formatted version

version_reader.normal # Output: 0.4.2

If you don’t like this output, just write a flavor to add a different one. There is already a Rails-flavor which adds some additional output formats:

version_reader.extend VersionReader::Flavor::Rails
version_reader.rails_env # Output: 0.4.2-development

Check the Readme for more details.

By the way, if you add this Gem in the Gemfile of your Rails-Application, it will automatically define MyApp::Application.version with a Rails-flavored instance of VersionReader.