bug#42212: Guix version rendered as 0.0-git in info manual

[Bengt Richter]

On +2020-07-16 03:12:37 +0530, Arun Isaac wrote:
> 
> > The “0.0-git” string comes from (guix self).  As noted there, we can’t
> > really afford to change the version string at each commit, or we’d have
> > to rebuild the manual at each commit.
> >
> > We could perhaps choose a more meaningful version string, though, maybe
> > by looking at the closest tag or something.
> 
> That sounds good, and `git describe` could provide us with the closest
> tag. Unfortunately, (git) doesn't seem to be available during `guix
> pull`. I'm trying to come up with workarounds. Do you have any ideas?

What does (copied from another laptop screen by hand, typos possible ;)
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
readlink -f 
/var/guix/profiles/per-user/{$USER,root}/current-guix/manifest|xargs grep -m1 
-A1 guix
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
get you? Anything useful?

On my other laptop, it got me (again copied/...elided from other screen)
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
/gnu/store/.../manifest: (("guix"
/gnu/store/.../manifest-   "87850c0"
--
/gnu/store/.../manifest: (("guix"
/gnu/store/.../manifest-   "0.16.0"
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

You can see that's ancient, so IDK if the same command will work for you.
"guix -V" there still shows 0.16.0 (which version should that show, BTW?)

I don't know how these versions correspond to what pull creates,
but zimoun is a whiz on that stuff, so maybe he will chime in :)
(I Cc'd him to raise the probability :)

HTH
-- 
Regards,
Bengt Richter