Versionize

stop using weird build scripts to increment your nuget's version, use versionize!

Automatic versioning and CHANGELOG generation, using conventional commit messages.

how it works:

1. when you land commits on your main branch, select the Squash and Merge option (not required).
2. add a title and body that follows the Conventional Commits Specification.
3. when you're ready to release a nuget package:
   1. git checkout main; git pull origin main
   2. run versionize
   3. git push --follow-tags origin main
   4. dotnet pack
   5. dotnet nuget push

versionize does the following:

1. bumps the version in your .csproj file (based on your commit history)
2. uses conventional-changelog to update CHANGELOG.md
3. commits .csproj file and CHANGELOG.md
4. tags a new release

Installation

dotnet tool install --global Versionize

Usage

Usage: versionize [command] [options]

Options:
  -?|-h|--help                         Show help information.
  -v|--version                         Show version information.
  -w|--workingDir <WORKING_DIRECTORY>  Directory containing projects to version
  -d|--dry-run                         Skip changing versions in projects, changelog generation and git commit
  --skip-dirty                         Skip git dirty check
  -r|--release-as <VERSION>            Specify the release version manually
  --silent                             Suppress output to console
  --skip-commit                        Skip commit and git tag after updating changelog and incrementing the
                                       version
  --skip-tag                           Skip git tag after making release commit
  -i|--ignore-insignificant-commits    Do not bump the version if no significant commits (fix, feat or BREAKING)
                                       are found
  --exit-insignificant-commits         Exits with a non zero exit code if no significant commits (fix, feat or
                                       BREAKING) are found
  --changelog-all                      Include all commits in the changelog not just fix, feat and breaking changes
  --commit-suffix                      Suffix to be added to the end of the release commit message (e.g. [skip ci])
  -p|--pre-release                     Release as pre-release version with given pre release label.
  -a|--aggregate-pre-releases          Include all pre-release commits in the changelog since the last full version.
  --proj-version-bump-logic            Use project version for bump logic, as opposed to git tag version.

Commands:
  inspect                              Prints the current version to stdout

Supported commit types

Every commit should be in the form <type>[optional scope]: <description> for example fix(parser): remove colon from type and scope

• fix - will trigger a patch version increment in the next release
• feat - will trigger a minor version increment in the next release
• all other types - you can use any commit type but that commit type will not trigger a version increment in the next release

Breaking changes must contain a line prefixed with BREAKING CHANGE: to allow versionize recognizing a breaking change. Breaking changes can use any commit type.

Example

git commit -m "chore: update dependencies" -m "BREAKING CHANGE: this will likely break the interface"

The happy versioning walkthrough

Preparation

Create a new project with the dotnet cli

mkdir SomeProject
dotnet new classlib

Ensure that a <Version> element is contained in file SomeProject.csproj

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <Version>1.0.0</Version>
  </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

Using versionize

Now let's start committing and releasing

git init
...make some changes to "Class1.cs"
git add *
git commit -a -m "chore: initial commit"

versionize

Will add a CHANGELOG.md, add git tags and commit everything. Note that the version in SomeProject.csproj will not change since this is your first release with versionize.

...make some changes to "Class1.cs"
git commit -a -m "fix: something went wrong we need a bugfix release"

versionize

Will update CHANGELOG.md, add git tags and commit everything. Note that the version in SomeProject.csproj is now 1.0.1.

...make some changes to "Class1.cs"
git commit -a -m "feat: something really awesome coming in the next release"

versionize

Will update CHANGELOG.md, add git tags and commit everything. Note that the version in SomeProject.csproj is now 1.1.0.

...make some changes to "Class1.cs"
git commit -a -m "feat: a really cool new feature" -m "BREAKING CHANGE: the API will break. sorry"

versionize

Will update CHANGELOG.md, add git tags and commit everything. Note that the version in SomeProject.csproj is now 2.0.0 since versionize detected a breaking change since the commit note BREAKING CHANGE was used above.

Pre-releases

Versionize supports creating pre-release versions by using the --pre-release flag with a pre-release label, for example alpha.

The following workflow illustrates how pre-release workflows with versionize work.

> git commit -a -m "chore: initial commit"
> versionize
// Generates version v1.0.0

> git commit -a -m "feat: some feature"
> versionize --pre-release alpha
// Generates version v1.1.0-alpha.0

> git commit -a -m "feat: some additional feature"
> versionize --pre-release alpha
// Generates version v1.1.0-alpha.1

> git commit -a -m "feat: some breaking feature" -m "BREAKING CHANGE: This is a breaking change"
> versionize --pre-release alpha
// Generates version v2.0.0-alpha.0

> versionize
// Generates version v2.0.0

Aggregated pre-releases changelog

By default, each commit message only appears in the release it was introduced. When using the pre-release feature this can result in a fragmented changelog. For example, when promoting to a full release the user has to browse through all the pre-release sections to see what's included.

v1.0.0-alpha.0
- featA
v1.0.0-alpha.1
- featB
v1.0.0

So to get around that you can pass the --aggregate-pre-releases flag

versionize --pre-release alpha
versionize --pre-release alpha
versionize --aggregate-pre-releases

to get output like the following

v1.0.0-alpha.0
- featA
v1.0.0-alpha.1
- featB
v1.0.0
- featA
- featB

This also works together with the pre-release option

versionize --pre-release alpha --aggregate-pre-releases

Skip pre-release tags

Some developers may prefer not to tag pre-releases. Here's an example of how to achieve that:

versionize --pre-release alpha --skip-tag --proj-version-bump-logic

proj-version-bump-logic is necessary because Versionize uses git tags by default to determine the current version. Without a git tag, the way we determine which commits get included in the changelog is by searching for the last commit message that starts with "chore(release):".

Configuration

You can configure versionize either by creating a .versionize JSON file the working directory.

Any of the command line parameters accepted by versionized can be provided via configuration file leaving out any -. For example skip-dirty can be provided as skipDirty in the configuration file.

Changelog customization can only be done via a .versionize file. The following is an example configuration:

{
  "changelogAll": true,
  "changelog": {
    "header": "My Changelog",
    "sections": [
      {
        "type": "feat",
        "section": "✨ Features",
        "hidden": false
      },
      {
        "type": "fix",
        "section": "🐛 Bug Fixes",
        "hidden": true
      },
      {
        "type": "perf",
        "section": "🚀 Performance",
        "hidden": false
      }
    ]
  }
}

Because changelogAll is true and the fix section is hidden, fix commits will appear in the a section titled "Other".

Developing

Want to do a PR and not care about setting up your development environment?

To get prettier test outputs run dotnet test with prettier test logger

dotnet test --logger prettier

Roadmap

• Pre Releases to allow creating beta.1, beta.2 versions
• Support .versionrc like "standard-version" does
• Support mono repo joint and disjoint version strategies
• --silent command line switch to suppress commandline output
• -i, --ignore-insignificant-commits command line switch to not create a new version if only insignificant (chore, ...) commits were done
• GitHub URLs in changelog