Document Processing version

[ulgens]

Out of curiosity, I was checking which Processing version was used for the latest build.

I checked https://py5coding.org/developer/build_process.html first.

for the py5 build, you must use one of the “portable” builds available on GitHub. Go to Processing’s Releases page on GitHub and find the latest stable release, identified with the green “Latest” tag.

while this is helpful for someone who is trying to build, it doesn't seem helpful for someone who is checking the build output and trying to understand which Processing version is used.

Then, checking the release https://github.com/py5coding/py5generator/releases/tag/py5-1433-0032-0.10.11a0, I saw the "1433" value in the tag. Knowing that it matches with a Processing release number, I assume py5 0.10.11a0 was built with Processing 1433. That gives usable information, but I believe it should be more accessible/visible and be mentioned in the release notes.

Then, searching that release number in the repo, I found

py5generator/py5-resources/py5-module/src/py5_tools/constants.py

Line 25 in e73ce23

PROCESSING_BUILD_NUMBER = 1433

but it seems this is only used by cmd tools and for information purposes only. It doesn't seem to have any affect on the build itself.

I believe this is a bit too much work and too many assumptions to find the Processing version. Including this information in release notes, or creating some sort of artifact with build details, during the build, could be helpful to contributors.

[hx2A]

while this is helpful for someone who is trying to build, it doesn't seem helpful for someone who is checking the build output and trying to understand which Processing version is used.

For development purposes you should always use the most recent portable that has the "latest" tag. When I do a release, that's the one that I will use.

The Processing API doesn't change very much from version to version. Most of the coding updates are actually for the IDE and not core.jar.

py5 does have a py5.__version__ attribute, much like other libraries. I could add a py5.__processing_version__ attribute with Processing version. But I wouldn't use the 1433 number because that's just a reference to the Processing build, which is meaningless to people who don't look at Github. It would be more useful to provide 4.5.5.