Proof of concept for packaging repo following semver using gitversion action
GitVersion is a CLI tool that helps you to automatically increment version number following the semantic versioning practice.
In GitFlow, we have main as the release branch and dev as test/development branch. In GitFlow, developers branch off from the dev branch following the name convention feature/something-blahblah, patch/blah-blah,bug/something, etc. Once the branch is complete, devs merge their branches to dev and susequently to main.
Semantic version follows this pattern.
{major}.{minor}.{patch}+SNAPSHOT...
We need semantic versioning because it helps end users and developers to keep track of changes of released software. Semantic versioning indicated how drastic the changes were from the last release.
First, you need to set up a GitVersion.yml file. If you have gitversion installed, you can run gitversion init in your local and push to remote. The CLI will prompt you with several messages. I suggest reading this article that explains what options to chose. For my project's use case, I went with option 3, which sasy each merged branch against master will increment the version (mainline mode). Afterwards, you should have GitVersion.yml in your remote repo.
Second, you need to create a GitHub Actions Workflow. In the workflow, you need to check out repository, install gitversion, and determine the version (template from DirtySoc).
Finally, you need to include a step in the workflow that will package the repo. This could be uploading to package manager or just zipping it.
The goal is to build and increment version number whenever something is pushed to main or develop. We can increment major, minor, or patch number by including +semver: major, +semver: minor, and +semver: patch. This message can be included anywhere in the commit message. The commit can be anywhere in the commit chain, meaning you can add +semver: minor in the commit message for feature/something and merging this to dev and then to main will increment the minor number