Use tar -xzvf /mnt/cf/bundle.tgz -O version.txt to extract the version.

The tricky part is how to handle the version. If your version has always three digits, then I suggest to multiply each part with 1000. That will give you a large number which you can easily compare. I.e. 1.0.0 == 1000000000; 1.0.1 = 1000000001. Another option is to format each part with %04d: 0001.0000.0000 and 0001.0000.0001. These strings can be compared.

Apologies for the downvote and the negative comment, but I m always suspicious of homework type questions. To make amends, I ve done it for you. You don t need awk, it can all be done in bash.

Just set F1 and F2 to the correct filenames. I ll leave it as an exercise for you to accept them as command line arguments :)

#!/usr/bin/env bash
F1=f1.tgz
F2=f2.tgz
VERSION_FILE=version.txt
version1=`tar -xzf $F1 -O $VERSION_FILE|sed -e  s/.*version=// `
version2=`tar -xzf $F2 -O $VERSION_FILE|sed -e  s/.*version=// `

if [ "$version1" == "$version2" ]; then
    echo "$F1 and $F2 contain the same version: $version1, $version2"
    exit 0;
fi

(   # start a subshell because we re changing IFS

    # Assume F1 is the latest file unless we find otherwise below
    latest_file=$F1
    latest_version=$version1

    # set the Internal Field Separator to a dot so we can
    # split the version strings into arrays
    IFS=.

    # make arrays of the version strings
    v1parts=( $version1 )
    v2parts=( $version2 )

    # loop over $v1parts, comparing to $v2parts
    # NOTE: this assumes the version strings have the same
    # number of components. If wont work for 1.1 and 1.1.1,
    # You d have to have 1.1.0 and 1.1.1
    # You could always add extra  0  components to the shorter array, but
    # life s too short...
    for ((i = 0 ; i < ${#v1parts[@]} ; i++ )); do
        # NOTE: ${#v1parts[@]} is the length of the v1parts array
        if [ "${v1parts[i]}" -lt "${v2parts[i]}" ]; then
            latest_file=$F2
            latest_version=$version2
            break;
        fi
    done
    echo "$latest_file is newer, version $latest_version"
)