GitVersion

GitVersion, starting from version 3.0, is mainly powered by configuration and no longer has branching strategies hard-coded.

Configuration tool

If you run gitversion init, GitVersion will launch into a configuration tool, which can help you configure GitVersion the way you want it.

Once complete, the init command will create a GitVersion.yml file in the working directory. It can be the root repository directory or any subdirectory in case you have a single repository for more than one project or are restricted to commit into a subdirectory.

Note

GitVersion ships with internal default configuration which works with GitHubFlow and GitFlow, probably with others too.

The develop branch is set to ContinuousDeployment mode by default as we have found that is generally what is needed when using GitFlow.

To see the effective configuration (defaults and overrides), you can run gitversion /showConfig.

To create your config file just type gitversion init in your repo directory, after installing. A minimal GitVersion.yml configuration file will be created. Modify this to suit your needs.

Global configuration

The global configuration looks like this:

next-version: 1.0
assembly-versioning-scheme: MajorMinorPatch
assembly-file-versioning-scheme: MajorMinorPatch
assembly-informational-format: '{InformationalVersion}'
mode: ContinuousDelivery
increment: Inherit
continuous-delivery-fallback-tag: ci
tag-prefix: '[vV]'
major-version-bump-message: '\+semver:\s?(breaking|major)'
minor-version-bump-message: '\+semver:\s?(feature|minor)'
patch-version-bump-message: '\+semver:\s?(fix|patch)'
no-bump-message: '\+semver:\s?(none|skip)'
legacy-semver-padding: 4
build-metadata-padding: 4
commits-since-version-source-padding: 4
tag-pre-release-weight: 60000
commit-message-incrementing: Enabled
ignore:
  sha: []
  commits-before: yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss
merge-message-formats: {}
update-build-number: true

The details of the available options are as follows:

next-version

Allows you to bump the next version explicitly. Useful for bumping main or a feature branch with breaking changes (i.e., a major increment), indicating what the next git tag is going to be.

next-version is not a permanent replacement for git tag and should only be used intermittently. Since version 5.5 GitVersion supports next-version with mode: Mainline and should not be treated as a "base version".

If you are using next-version and are experiencing weird versioning behaviour, please remove it, create a git tag with an appropriate version number on an appropriate historical commit and see if that resolves any versioning issues you may have.

assembly-versioning-scheme

When updating assembly info, assembly-versioning-scheme tells GitVersion how to treat the AssemblyVersion attribute. Useful to lock the major when using Strong Naming. Note: you can use None to skip updating the AssemblyVersion while still updating the AssemblyFileVersion and AssemblyInformationVersion attributes. Valid values: MajorMinorPatchTag, MajorMinorPatch, MajorMinor, Major, None.

assembly-file-versioning-scheme

When updating assembly info, assembly-file-versioning-scheme tells GitVersion how to treat the AssemblyFileVersion attribute. Note: you can use None to skip updating the AssemblyFileVersion while still updating the AssemblyVersion and AssemblyInformationVersion attributes. Valid values: MajorMinorPatchTag, MajorMinorPatch, MajorMinor, Major, None.

assembly-file-versioning-format

Specifies the format of AssemblyFileVersion and overwrites the value of assembly-file-versioning-scheme.

Expressions in curly braces reference one of the variables or a process-scoped environment variable (when prefixed with env:). For example,

# use a variable if non-null or a fallback value otherwise
assembly-file-versioning-format: '{Major}.{Minor}.{Patch}.{WeightedPreReleaseNumber ?? 0}'

# use an environment variable or raise an error if not available
assembly-file-versioning-format: '{Major}.{Minor}.{Patch}.{env:BUILD_NUMBER}'

# use an environment variable if available or a fallback value otherwise
assembly-file-versioning-format: '{Major}.{Minor}.{Patch}.{env:BUILD_NUMBER ?? 42}'

assembly-versioning-format

Specifies the format of AssemblyVersion and overwrites the value of assembly-versioning-scheme. Follows the same formatting semantics as assembly-file-versioning-format.

assembly-informational-format

Specifies the format of AssemblyInformationalVersion. Follows the same formatting semantics as assembly-file-versioning-format. The default value is {InformationalVersion}.

mode

Sets the mode of how GitVersion should create a new version. Read more at versioning modes.

increment

The part of the SemVer to increment when GitVersion detects it needs to be increased, such as for commits after a tag: Major, Minor, Patch, None.

The special value Inherit means that GitVersion should find the parent branch (i.e. the branch where the current branch was branched from), and use its values for increment, prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version and tracks-release-branches.

continuous-delivery-fallback-tag

When using mode: ContinuousDeployment, the value specified in continuous-delivery-fallback-tag will be used as the pre-release tag for branches which do not have one specified. Default set to ci.

Just to clarify: For a build name without ...-ci-<buildnumber> or in other words without a PreReleaseTag (ergo "PreReleaseTag":"" in GitVersion's JSON output) at the end you would need to set continuous-delivery-fallback-tag to an empty string (''):

mode: ContinuousDeployment
continuous-delivery-fallback-tag: ''
...

Doing so can be helpful if you use your main branch as a release branch.

tag-prefix

A regex which is used to trim Git tags before processing (e.g., v1.0.0). Default is [vV], although this is just for illustrative purposes as we do a IgnoreCase match and could be v.

major-version-bump-message

The regex to match commit messages with to perform a major version increment. Default set to '\+semver:\s?(breaking|major)', which will match occurrences of +semver: major and +semver: breaking in a commit message.

minor-version-bump-message

The regex to match commit messages with to perform a minor version increment. Default set to '\+semver:\s?(feature|minor)', which will match occurrences of +semver: feature and +semver: minor in a commit message.

patch-version-bump-message

The regex to match commit messages with to perform a patch version increment. Default set to '\+semver:\s?(fix|patch)', which will match occurrences of +semver: fix and +semver: patch in a commit message.

no-bump-message

Used to tell GitVersion not to increment when in Mainline development mode. Default \+semver:\s?(none|skip), which will match occurrences of +semver: none and +semver: skip

legacy-semver-padding

The number of characters to pad LegacySemVer to in the LegacySemVerPadded variable. Default is 4, which will pad the LegacySemVer value of 3.0.0-beta1 to 3.0.0-beta0001.

build-metadata-padding

The number of characters to pad BuildMetaData to in the BuildMetaDataPadded variable. Default is 4, which will pad the BuildMetaData value of 1 to 0001.

commits-since-version-source-padding

The number of characters to pad CommitsSinceVersionSource to in the CommitsSinceVersionSourcePadded variable. Default is 4, which will pad the CommitsSinceVersionSource value of 1 to 0001.

tag-pre-release-weight

The pre-release weight in case of tagged commits. If the value is not set in the configuration, a default weight of 60000 is used instead. If the WeightedPreReleaseNumber variable is 0 and this parameter is set, its value is used. This helps if your branching model is GitFlow and the last release build, which is often tagged, can utilise this parameter to produce a monotonically increasing build number.

commit-message-incrementing

Sets whether it should be possible to increment the version with special syntax in the commit message. See the *-version-bump-message options above for details on the syntax. Default set to Enabled; set to Disabled to disable.

commit-date-format

Sets the format which will be used to format the CommitDate output variable.

ignore

The header property for the ignore configuration.

Note: When ignoring a commit or a range of commits, they are only ignored in the search for a version source, not when calculating other parts of the version number, such as build metadata.

sha

A sequence of SHAs to be excluded from the version calculations. Useful when there is a rogue commit in history yielding a bad version. You can use either style below:

ignore:
  sha: [e7bc24c0f34728a25c9187b8d0b041d935763e3a, 764e16321318f2fdb9cdeaa56d1156a1cba307d7]

ignore:
  sha:
    - e7bc24c0f34728a25c9187b8d0b041d935763e3a
    - 764e16321318f2fdb9cdeaa56d1156a1cba307d7

commits-before

Date and time in the format yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss (eg commits-before: 2015-10-23T12:23:15) to setup an exclusion range. Effectively any commit before commits-before will be ignored.

merge-message-formats

Custom merge message formats to enable identification of merge messages that do not follow the built-in conventions. Entries should be added as key-value pairs where the value is a regular expression. e.g.

merge-message-formats:
    tfs: ^Merged (?:PR (?<PullRequestNumber>\d+)): Merge (?<SourceBranch>.+) to (?<TargetBranch>.+)

The regular expression should contain the following capture groups:

SourceBranch - Identifies the source branch of the merge
TargetBranch - Identifies the target branch of the merge
PullRequestNumber - Captures the pull-request number

Custom merge message formats are evaluated before any built in formats. Support for Conventional Commits can be configured.

update-build-number

Configures GitVersion to update the build number or not when running on a build server.

Branch configuration

Then we have branch specific configuration, which looks something like this:

Note

v4 changed from using regexes for keys, to named configs

If you have branch specific configuration upgrading to v4 will force you to upgrade.

branches:
  main:
    regex: ^master$|^main$
    mode: ContinuousDelivery
    tag: ''
    increment: Patch
    prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version: true
    track-merge-target: false
    source-branches: [ 'develop', 'release' ]
    tracks-release-branches: false
    is-release-branch: false
    is-mainline: true
    pre-release-weight: 55000
  develop:
    regex: ^dev(elop)?(ment)?$
    mode: ContinuousDeployment
    tag: alpha
    increment: Minor
    prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version: false
    track-merge-target: true
    source-branches: []
    tracks-release-branches: true
    is-release-branch: false
    is-mainline: false
    pre-release-weight: 0
  release:
    regex: ^releases?[/-]
    mode: ContinuousDelivery
    tag: beta
    increment: None
    prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version: true
    track-merge-target: false
    source-branches: [ 'develop', 'main', 'support', 'release' ]
    tracks-release-branches: false
    is-release-branch: true
    is-mainline: false
    pre-release-weight: 30000
  feature:
    regex: ^features?[/-]
    mode: ContinuousDelivery
    tag: useBranchName
    increment: Inherit
    prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version: false
    track-merge-target: false
    source-branches: [ 'develop', 'main', 'release', 'feature', 'support', 'hotfix' ]
    tracks-release-branches: false
    is-release-branch: false
    is-mainline: false
    pre-release-weight: 30000
  pull-request:
    regex: ^(pull|pull\-requests|pr)[/-]
    mode: ContinuousDelivery
    tag: PullRequest
    increment: Inherit
    prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version: false
    tag-number-pattern: '[/-](?<number>\d+)[-/]'
    track-merge-target: false
    source-branches: [ 'develop', 'main', 'release', 'feature', 'support', 'hotfix' ]
    tracks-release-branches: false
    is-release-branch: false
    is-mainline: false
    pre-release-weight: 30000
  hotfix:
    regex: ^hotfix(es)?[/-]
    mode: ContinuousDelivery
    tag: beta
    increment: Patch
    prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version: false
    track-merge-target: false
    source-branches: [ 'develop', 'main', 'support' ]
    tracks-release-branches: false
    is-release-branch: false
    is-mainline: false
    pre-release-weight: 30000
  support:
    regex: ^support[/-]
    mode: ContinuousDelivery
    tag: ''
    increment: Patch
    prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version: true
    track-merge-target: false
    source-branches: [ 'main' ]
    tracks-release-branches: false
    is-release-branch: false
    is-mainline: true
    pre-release-weight: 55000

If you don't specify the regex, the built-in for that branch config will be used (recommended).

We don't envision many people needing to change most of these configuration values, but here they are if you need to:

regex

This is the regex which is used to match the current branch to the correct branch configuration.

source-branches

Because Git commits only refer to parent commits (not branches) GitVersion sometimes cannot tell which branch the current branch was branched from.

Take this commit graph

* release/v1.0.0   * feature/foo
| ________________/
|/
*
*
* (main)

By looking at this graph, you cannot tell which of these scenarios happened:

feature/foo branches off release/v1.0.0
- Branch release/v1.0.0 from main
- Branch feature/foo from release/v1.0.0
- Add a commit to both release/v1.0.0 and feature/foo
- release/v1.0.0 is the base for feature/foo
release/v1.0.0 branches off feature/foo
- Branch feature/foo from main
- Branch release/v1.0.0 from feature/foo
- Add a commit to both release/v1.0.0 and feature/foo
- feature/foo is the base for release/v1.0.0

Or put more simply, you cannot tell which branch was created first, release/v1.0.0 or feature/foo.

To resolve this issue, we give GitVersion a hint about our branching workflows by telling it what types of branches a branch can be created from. For example, feature branches are, by default, configured to have the following source branches:

source-branches: ['main', 'develop', 'feature', 'hotfix', 'support']

This means that we will never bother to evaluate pull request branches as merge base options and being explicit in this way also improves the performance of GitVersion.

is-source-branch-for

The reverse of source-branches. This property was introduced to keep it easy to extend GitVersion's config.

It exists to make it easier to extend GitVersion's configuration. If only source-branches exists and you add a new branch type, for instance unstable/, you then need to re-define the source-branches configuration value for existing branches (like feature/) to now include the new unstable branch.

A complete example:

branches:
  unstable:
    regex: ...
    is-source-branch-for: ['main', 'develop', 'feature', 'hotfix', 'support']

Without this configuration value you would have to do:

branches:
  unstable:
    regex: ...
  feature:
    source-branches: ['unstable', 'develop', 'feature', 'hotfix', 'support']
  release:
    source-branches: ['unstable', 'develop']
  etc...

branches

The header for all the individual branch configuration.

mode

Same as for the global configuration, explained above.

tag

The pre release tag to use for this branch. Use the value useBranchName to use the branch name instead. For example feature/foo would become a pre-release tag of foo with this value. Use the value {BranchName} as a placeholder to insert the branch name. For example feature/foo would become a pre-release tag of alpha.foo with the value of alpha.{BranchName}.

Note: To clear a default use an empty string: tag: ''

increment

Same as for the global configuration, explained above.

prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version

When release-2.0.0 is merged into main, we want main to build 2.0.0. If release-2.0.0 is merged into develop we want it to build 2.1.0, this option prevents incrementing after a versioned branch is merged.

In a GitFlow-based repository, setting this option can have implications on the CommitsSinceVersionSource output variable. It can rule out a potentially better version source proposed by the MergeMessageBaseVersionStrategy. For more details and an in-depth analysis, please see the discussion.

tag-number-pattern

Pull requests require us to extract the pre-release number out of the branch name so refs/pulls/534/merge builds as PullRequest.534. This is a regex with a named capture group called number.

If the branch mode is set to ContinuousDeployment, then the extracted number is appended to the name of the pre-release tag and the number portion is the number of commits since the last tag. This enables consecutive commits to the pull request branch to generate unique full semantic version numbers when the branch is configured to use ContinuousDeployment mode.

Example usage:

branches:
  pull-request:
    mode: ContinuousDeployment
    tag: PullRequest
    increment: Inherit
    track-merge-target: true
    tag-number-pattern: '[/-](?<number>\d+)[-/]'

track-merge-target

Strategy which will look for tagged merge commits directly off the current branch. For example develop → release/1.0.0 → merge into main and tag 1.0.0. The tag is not on develop, but develop should be version 1.0.0 now.

tracks-release-branches

Indicates this branch config represents develop in GitFlow.

is-release-branch

Indicates this branch config represents a release branch in GitFlow.

is-mainline

When using Mainline mode, this indicates that this branch is a mainline. By default main and support/* are mainlines.

pre-release-weight

Provides a way to translate the PreReleaseLabel (variables) to a numeric value in order to avoid version collisions across different branches. For example, a release branch created after "1.2.3-alpha.55" results in "1.2.3-beta.1" and thus e.g. "1.2.3-alpha.4" and "1.2.3-beta.4" would have the same file version: "1.2.3.4". One of the ways to use this value is to set assembly-file-versioning-format: {Major}.{Minor}.{Patch}.{WeightedPreReleaseNumber}. If the pre-release-weight is set, it would be added to the PreReleaseNumber to get a final AssemblySemFileVer, otherwise a branch specific default for pre-release-weight will be used in the calculation. Related Issues 1145 and 1366.