"git describe --abbrev=0 --tags" doesn't return the latest stable version

[elas7]

In line 124 of README.md, the following command is suggested to check out the latest stable version of jQuery:

git pull; git checkout $(git describe --abbrev=0 --tags)

In particular, git describe --abbrev=0 --tags is meant to return the most recent tag, which should also be the last jQuery version number.

This doesn't work because, on the master branch, it returns "2.1.0-beta1" which is far from the latest stable version, even if it is the latest reachable tag.

The problem is that the tags with the version numbers are generally made on separate branches, and therefore they are unreachable with the "describe" command.

With the branching and tagging system used in jQuery, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to get the latest tag (link). Also, given the different versions (1.x and 2.x, now 3.x and Compat 3.x), it can be hard to define which one corresponds to the latest stable version, if any.

My suggestion would be to remove the notion of automatically getting the latest stable version through a git command.

[mgol]

@elas7 Thanks for the report! We could use npm API to query the latest version or just scrap it out of https://www.npmjs.org/package/jquery/latest but it's probably better to remove the automatic way of doing that as you described.

For the record, we're using the detached tag technique because Bower doesn't support something that's not in the repository, with npm this wouldn't be a problem.

[scottgonzalez]

I think users should be explicitly choosing a version, so I think this should go away as well. With that being said, this will give you the most recently tagged version:

git for-each-ref --format="%(refname:short)" --sort=-authordate --count=1 refs/tags

It's worth noting that both this and the existing command are based on date, not based on versions. The most recent tag is not necessarily the current version. To get the correct value 100% of the time, you'd need to sort on the version numbers, which is definitely out of scope for this README (though very simple with node-semver).

[elas7]

Seeing that there's consensus, how about this for a replacement text?:

To create a custom build, first check out the version you want to customize:

git pull; git checkout <version-name>

The brackets follow the custom command description syntax

[mgol]

The brackets follow the custom command description syntax

This is not a man page, though so I'm not sure if context is clear. Maybe:

To create a custom build, first check out the version you want to customize:

git pull; git checkout VERSION

where VERSION is the jQuery version you want to customize.

[mgol]

Related: #1862

[elas7]

That sounds good to me

[dmethvin]

@elas7 did you want to file a pull request for this change?