Dude was shall we say, hands on about certain things. My dissertation is still embargoed because he is paranoid about being scooped. Joke's on him, everything that hasn't been published is not exciting enough to meet his own metric for publishability.

Makefile in other comments. You'll need something like this on the title page (this assumes you use my Makefile which puts the version in VERSION.tex [that's the literal name of the file, not a placeholder]):

{\bf{\color{red}DOCUMENT REVISION:}} {\color{blue}\input{VERSION}}

Sure thing. This also includes the beamer bit which I used for my defense. It's all pretty hacky but hope it's useful!

#
# Errors aren't handled gracefully (tex doesn't write to stderr, it seems)
# If you encounter errors, use "make verbose"
#
# For small changes (probably those without references), use "make quick"
#
# Thanks to https://gist.github.com/Miliox/4035649 for dependency outline

TEX = pdflatex
BTEX = biber
MAKE = make -s
TEXFLAGS = -halt-on-error
# $(MAIN).log is dumb if we have multiple targets!
SILENT = > /dev/null || cat $(MAIN).log
SILENT_NOER = 2>/dev/null 1>/dev/null
EDITOR = vim -p
PDFVIEW = evince
MAIN = main
PRES = presentation
ALL = $(MAIN).pdf
RECURS = media/ manuscripts/
VERSION := $(shell git rev-parse --short HEAD | cut -c 1-4)$(shell git diff-index --quiet HEAD && (echo -n ' ';git log -1 --format=[%cd]) || (echo -n '* '; date -u '+[%c]'))

all: recurs $(ALL)
pres: $(PRES).pdf
scratch: scratch.pdf

scratch.pdf: scratch.tex
	@echo "TEX	(final)	$<"
	@$(TEX) $(TEXFLAGS) $< $(SILENT)

verbose: SILENT = ''
verbose: $(ALL)

recurs: $(RECURS)
	@$(foreach DIR, $(RECURS), \
		echo "MAKE	(CD)	$(CURDIR)/$(DIR)"; \
		$(MAKE) -C $(DIR) $(MAKECMDGOALS);)
	@echo "MAKE	(CD)	./"

clean:
	@echo "SH	(RM)	Not recursing; 'make allclean' to clear generated files."
	@rm -f *.aux *.log *.out *.pdf *.bbl *.blg *.toc *.lof *.lot *.bcf *.run.xml

allclean: recurs
	@echo "SH	(RM)	A clean directory is a happy directory"
	@rm -f *.aux *.log *.out *.pdf *.bbl *.blg *.toc *.lof *.lot *.bcf *.run.xml
version:
	@echo "SH      (ver) $(VERSION)"
	@echo $(VERSION) > VERSION.tex

nixpages: main.pdf
	@echo "PDF     (pdftk)"
	@pdftk main.pdf cat 1 4-end output final.pdf

quick: $(MAIN).tex version
	@echo "TEX	(final)	$<"
	@$(TEX) $(TEXFLAGS) $< $(SILENT)

$(MAIN).pdf: $(MAIN).tex $(MAIN).bbl all.tex tex/abstract.tex tex/intro.tex tex/appendix.tex tex/some_section.tex tex/some_other_section.tex
	@echo "TEX	(draft)	$<"
	@$(TEX) $(TEXFLAGS) --draftmode  $< $(SILENT)
	@echo "TEX	(final)	$<"
	@$(TEX) $(TEXFLAGS) $< $(SILENT)

$(MAIN).bbl: $(MAIN).aux
	@echo "BIB	(bib)	$(MAIN)"
	@$(BTEX) $(MAIN) > /dev/null
	
$(MAIN).aux: $(MAIN).tex $(MAIN).bib version
	@echo "TEX	(draft)	$<"
	@$(TEX) $(TEXFLAGS) --draftmode  $< $(SILENT)

$(PRES).pdf: $(PRES).tex $(PRES).bbl tex/beamer*.tex tex/slides/*.tex
	@echo "TEX	(draft)	$<"
	@$(TEX) $(TEXFLAGS) --draftmode  $< $(SILENT)
	@echo "TEX	(final)	$<"
	@$(TEX) $(TEXFLAGS) $< $(SILENT)
$(PRES).bbl: $(PRES).aux
	@echo "BIB	(bib)	$(PRES)"
	@$(BTEX) $(PRES) > /dev/null
$(PRES).aux: $(PRES).tex $(MAIN).bib
	@echo "TEX	(draft)	$<"
	@$(TEX) $(TEXFLAGS) --draftmode  $< $(SILENT)

edit:
	@echo "EDIT	(fork)	$(EDITOR)"
	@$(EDITOR) ./tex/*.tex *.tex

view:
	@echo "VIEW	(fork)	$(PDFVIEW)"
	@$(PDFVIEW) $(ALL) $(SILENT_NOER) &