Got a build project running in DOS and need to generate a build number?
Building the Dungeon Raider project has been a mission and when using build tools locally it can be a problem keeping track of version numbers. Rather than doing this manually here is a simple script that automatically updated a build number every time it is executed:
@echo off
echo Set build version
set /p BuildTemplate=<BuildVersionTemplate.txt
set /p BuildCount=<BuildCount.txt
set /a BuildCount=%BuildCount%+1
echo %BuildCount% > BuildCount.txt
set BuildString=%BuildTemplate:build=%%BuildCount%
echo Setting build version: %BuildString%
echo %BuildString% > version.txt
echo %date% %time% %BuildString% >> BuildVersion.logThe following files are used by this script:
| File name | Purpose | Recommended default |
| BuildVersionTemplate.txt | Contains the format of the final string. The reserved word ‘build’ is replaced in the final version string | 1.build |
| BuildCount.txt | Contains the number of times the script was executed | 1 |
| BuildVersion.log | Log file showing the date/time and version numbers | <will be generated> |
| version.txt | The output file that can be consumed by your project | <will be generated> |
To use save the batch file as BuildVersion.bat and set the BuildVersionTemplate.txt an d BuildCount.bat as above.
Every time you run the batch file from now on it will update the version.txt file with the following content:
Run 1: 1.1
Run 2: 1.2
Run 3: 1.3 etc…
If there is a major version change then you could update the BuildVersionTemplate.txt to be 2.<build> and reset the BuildCount.txt to 0 The result would then be:
Run 1: 2.1
Run 2: 2.2
Run 3: 2.3
Storing these files in source control should allow you to store the current status of the build version so you remain consistant.
The log file contains a list of build runs:
15/10/2024 12:53:15.32 1.15
15/10/2024 12:53:20.60 1.16 Which allows for a track of the build runs against a project.
Why?
The intention of this is to generate a simple version.txt file that can be included within a project. In this particular case it will be part of the build pipeline to generate a version.txt that will be loaded by the project and displayed on screen. In this particular case (Dungeon Raider) it removes some of the complexity of the build version tracking.