Support pre-release packages with floating versions. Version="*-*" and similar.

[pranavkm]

UPDATE: final solution details

• Link to spec - https://github.com/NuGet/Home/wiki/Support-pre-release-packages-with-floating-versions
• Status - Implemented in version 5.6 of NuGet, 16.6 of Visual Studio and 3.1.300 of the .NET Core SDK.

Original Issue:
Consider a project.json specification such as

{
   "A: "1.0.*"
}

If the only packages in the feed are prerelease packages such as A.1.0.0-alpha, A.1.0.1-beta, the restore fails stating it was unable to resolve package A.

---

[anangaur] Adding the requirement as evolved during the discussions:

As Noel, who uses NuGet packages in PackageReference based projects,

• I would like to use floating versions that only resolves to stable versions of the package (Current behavior)
• I would like to use floating version that can resolve to the latest version even if the latest happens to be a pre-release version.
• I should be able to use both the braces/regex formats i.e. 1.* or [1.0.0, 2.0.0) that can include pre-release versions
• I would like to additionally define whether I want to resolve to rc, beta, alpha or all pre-releases.

---

Link to spec - https://github.com/NuGet/Home/wiki/Support-pre-release-packages-with-floating-versions
Status - Implemented in version 5.6 of NuGet, 16.6 of Visual Studio and 3.1.300 of the .NET Core SDK.

[yishaigalatzer]

We can discuss this for 3.2

[yishaigalatzer]

I looked at how NPM does it, and it looks like it will not allow pre-releases with such a specifier.

We need to work on how we extend our syntax to support ranges (do we go with something similar to npm? Do we also allow 1.*-*? Do we allow for version ranges ala packages.config/nuspec?

[pranavkm]

Do we also allow 1.-

AFAIK it stops when it sees the *. @emgarten would know this better.

[yishaigalatzer]

Yes it does, my comment was a question about what we should do in the future :)

[CZEMacLeod]

Wondering if there is any progress on this as for CI purposes it would really help us to support 7.0.*-* or something like

{
      "version": "7.0.*",
      "prerelease": true
}

[yishaigalatzer]

Not yet, a good indication of progress would be if the item is assigned to someone for work.

[CZEMacLeod]

Unfortunately that's what I thought... Just been open for over a year and bumped again and again... :(

[anangaur]

Update: This work has been scheduled.

[karann-msft]

Update - here is a link to the spec - https://github.com/NuGet/Home/wiki/Support-pre-release-packages-with-floating-versions

We will continue to use this issue for feedback.

[nkolev92]

Pull Request out based on the above linked design NuGet/NuGet.Client#3247.

[jgalarse]

Hi all, I saw that the "Support pre-release packages with floating versions" changes are implement in the 5.6.0 nuget version and I tried the latest 5.6.0 preview2 version but the floating version format "-" is still considered as an invalid version format.

Am i missing something? Or do i have to wait for the full 5.6.0 release?

Visual Studio 2019 16.5.4
Nuget 5.6.0 Preview2

[anangaur]

@nkolev92 can you point to the version of the tools where this works?

[nkolev92]

It will be a part of the 5.6 release/16.6 of Visual Studio.

It will be in preview 3 of both which is supposed to ship next week.

[jgalarse]

@anangaur ,@nkolev92 Thank you so much!!

[sm-g]

@nkolev92 Are versions like (,1.3.*] supported? NuGet.CommandLine 5.6 can not restore csproj with such version.

[nkolev92]

@sm-g Floating versions are only allowed in the min part of the range, they cannot be part of the upper bound, so your example version range is not supported.