Automatically generate theme version number in CI

[fabiankaegy]

More and more things in WordPress use the theme version number for caching. Patterns especially so. We should find a way to make the version number a unique hash or just timestamp of the deploy so it busts all those caches on deploys

[claytoncollie]

@fabiankaegy Are you talking about the version number stored in the functions.php file in the themes? I usually remove that and rely on filemtime or the 10up-toolkit version for assets. Is this version number used in other places or are you talking abou the style.css version number?

[fabiankaegy]

@claytoncollie I am talking about the one in the style.css file because that is what WordPress uses for caching patterns etc. (with no alternative)

The one in PHP also gets deleted first thing whenever I start anything 😂 :)

[cr0ybot]

My unsolicited 2 cents:

I have a script that runs during npm version that keeps the package.json version in sync with the theme/plugin version number. You can see an example of it in the term query block plugin: https://github.com/cr0ybot/term-query/blob/main/scripts/version.js (can be adapted for theme versioning as well)

This is hooked in with this line added to scripts in the main package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "version": "node ./scripts/version.js && git add --all"
  }
}

Seems like something that could be tweaked to use commit hashes or something as well for the sorts of projects that are more of the continuous deployment types.