I name my app versions as YYYY.MMDD.Major.Minor.Working. As an example, the current version of an app while I’m working on it may be 2020.0506.1.24.3 while the published version may be 2020.0501.1.23.

I’ve got a good habit of updating the versions section—the Major.Minor.Working bit. But I often forget to update the date bit, specially the DD section. So, after a bit of research (THANK YOU STACKOVERFLOW, FOR EVERYTHING), I got this bit working.

This is all it took:

// build.gradle (app module)

def versionString="0.6.1"

static def getDate() {
    return new Date().format('yyyy.MMdd')
}

android {
    ...
    defaultConfig {
    ...
    versionName "${getDate()}.${versionString}"
    ...

I manually update the versionString when I move to the next version. The build process automatically adds the date to it. Simple, and robust :)