About GIT versions

Components are maintained using the GIT SCM (Source Code Management) system. Instead of assigning versions by hand, something which developers tend to forget, we leave this task to GIT. GIT's versions are generated using the command git describe, which describes a version with four components, separated with "-":

• The last contained tag. A tag is a label that the programmer gave to a version.
• The number of changes (commits) since the last tag. If there are no commits after the tag, this is omitted.
• If there are changes after the tag it also gives the GIT hash of the version. This number uniquely describes the version of the component.
• Finally, the text DIRTY is added if the actual files of the component do not match the files in the (local) repository. This means that one or more of the files has been edited locally.