change version number at build time - delphi

Question

I need to set the version of my delphi project to be the same as another project (not delphi) as part of a build script. Is there a way to control the version number without going thru the IDE, for example command line param of the compiler or something like that? Thanks

Answer 1

Include a line like
{$R 'version.res'}
in your project. And create a version.rc file with your version information. You will have to build the resource yourself in older Delphi versions using brcc32. In newer Delphi versions you can use
{$R 'version.res' 'version.rc'}
to have the IDE build it automatically for you.
The simplest version.rc would look something like:
1 VERSIONINFO
FILEVERSION 9999, 9999, 99, 18048
PRODUCTVERSION 9999, 9999, 99, 18048
FILEOS 0x00000004L // comment: VOS_WINDOWS32
FILETYPE VFT_APP
{
BLOCK "VarFileInfo"
{
VALUE "Translation", 0x409, 0x4E4 // comment: 0x4E4 = 1252
}
BLOCK "StringFileInfo"
{
BLOCK "040904E4"
{
VALUE "CompanyName", "Company Name\0"
VALUE "FileVersion", "9999.9999.99.18048\0"
VALUE "LegalCopyright", "Copyright \0"
VALUE "ProductName", "Product Name\0"
VALUE "ProductVersion", "9999.9999.99.18048\0"
VALUE "Homepage", "http://www.mydomain.com\0"
}
}
}
For more information, please refer to MSDN on the VERSIONINFO structure.

Answer 2

Marjan gives an excellent answer above, but my answer takes the answer a little further. Consider this RC file:
VS_VERSION_INFO VERSIONINFO
#include "..\Ver_Num_Application.txt"
#define APPLICATION_NAME "My amazing project\0"
#define VER_NUM_ARTWORKS 4
#include "..\Libraries\Paslib32\Ver_Num_Library.txt"
#define COMPANY_NAME "My company\0"
FILEVERSION VER_NUM_ARTWORKS, VER_NUM_LIBRARY, VER_NUM_APPLICATION, 1000
FILEFLAGSMASK 0x3fL
#ifdef _DEBUG
FILEFLAGS 0x9L
#else
FILEFLAGS 0x8L
#endif
FILEOS 0x4L
FILETYPE 0x1L
FILESUBTYPE 0x0L
BEGIN
BLOCK "StringFileInfo"
BEGIN
BLOCK "040904b0"
BEGIN
VALUE "CompanyName", COMPANY_NAME
VALUE "FileDescription", APPLICATION_NAME
VALUE "LegalCopyright", "Copyright (C) "COMPANY_NAME
VALUE "ProductName", APPLICATION_NAME
END
END
BLOCK "VarFileInfo"
BEGIN
VALUE "Translation", 0x409, 1200
END
END
The benefit in using the several #INCLUDE statements is that you can leave the RC file alone and then simply modify (or even auto-generate) the *.txt include files which look like:
Ver_Num_Application.txt:
#define VER_NUM_APPLICATION 6
Ver_Num_Library.txt:
#define VER_NUM_LIBRARY 156
Note that now you have to delete the *.res files before running your build to force the linker to regenerate them from (possibly changed) version numbers.