Applying semver.stage=snapshot between release condidates

[bric3]

Hi, there,

Thank you for the plugin and the work. I'm a bit unsatisfied by the state of other plugins, I have been using some for years, but I like the simpleness of yours.

I have one question about a behavior I'm not sure is currently possible. I making a library that is in the release candidate stage, but in-between the RCs I'd like to publish snapshots, because OSSRH repo for snapshots, expects versions to end with -SNAPSHOT.

Currently the git graph looks like, version 0.0.1 is not yet released, only few candidates :

gitGraph
    commit
    commit id: "fix(osgi): Remove split package to fix OSGI ClassLoading error" tag: "v0.0.1-rc.3"
    commit
    commit id: "around 50 commits"
    commit
    commit id: "last commit" type: HIGHLIGHT

But the command printSemver, issues the following

$ ./gradlew -Psemver.stage=snapshot printSemver
Type-safe project accessors is an incubating feature.

> Task :printSemver
semver for fireplace: 0.1.1-SNAPSHOT

I expected it to be 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT as snapshots seems like a smaller increment that alphas, betas, candidates. I believe snapshots should only increment after a final release.

[bric3]

Maybe out of scope there, I can create issue if needed.

---

I struggled a bit to make the -Psemver.stage=snapshot property work, because I was using the tagPrefix on my root project as I was thinking I needed to tell the plugin that git tags are prefixed by v.

plugins {
  id("com.javiersc.semver.gradle.plugin") version "0.3.0-alpha.5"
}

semver {
    tagPrefix.set("v")
}

So the output was on a clean repo

$ ./gradlew -Psemver.stage=snapshot printSemver
Type-safe project accessors is an incubating feature.

> Task :printSemver
semver for fireplace: v0.0.1-rc.3.54+e333201

While debugging the plugin I found the reason is related to whether tag prefixes are equal

semver-gradle-plugin/semver-gradle-plugin/main/kotlin/com/javiersc/semver/gradle/plugin/valuesources/VersionValueSource.kt

Lines 42 to 50 in 72b1941

	val isSamePrefix = tagPrefixProperty.get() == projectTagPrefix.get()
	val lastSemver = cache.lastVersionInCurrentBranch(projectTagPrefix.get())
	val lastVersionInCurrentBranch =
	cache.versionsInCurrentBranch(projectTagPrefix.get()).map(Version::toString)
	val version: String =
	calculatedVersion(
	stageProperty = stageProperty.orNull.takeIf { isSamePrefix },

This makes me wonder how to use properly in a multi-project where all sub-projects have the same version. Am I using this properly ?

---

That reminds I have some logic whether the version is a snapshot or a releasable artefact ; this could be useful if the plugin exposed some properties like isDirty, or isSnaphsot, or the current stage.

[bric3]

OK, after a little more debugging the two issues seem related, i.e. the snapshot incrementing to 0.1.1, is because the git tag is not read if the tag prefix is not set.

So one need to set

semver.tagPrefix=v
semver.project.tagPrefix=v

But then the default snapshot increment is not what I'm looking for, i'd like no increment. In other word only increment snapshot if the last tag is a final release.

$ ./gradlew -Psemver.stage=snapshot -Psemver.checkClean=false printSemver
Type-safe project accessors is an incubating feature.

> Task :printSemver
semver for fireplace: v0.0.2-SNAPSHOT

[JavierSegoviaCordoba]

You should use the same tagPrefix for multi-projects that shares the version. The default tag is "" (empty String) so if you want to use v you need to set the version via the extension or via gradle.properties.

The gradle.properties solution is added for incompatibilities with other plugins that are not respecting Gradle lazy configuration and are picking the version in the configuration phase.

[bric3]

oh so you mean something like this (and without the properties) ?

allprojects {
    apply(plugin = "com.javiersc.semver.gradle.plugin")
    semver {
        tagPrefix.set("v")
    }
}

[JavierSegoviaCordoba]

Yeah, but you need to indicate to the plugin with which task are you working.

All projects use v prefix with that configuration, if you run ./gradlew printSemver "-Psemver.stage=rc", it will not work as you are passing implicitly the empty string, you should indicate via CLI which tag are you going to work ./gradlew printSemver "-Psemver.stage=rc" "-Psemver.tagPrefix=v"

But as you are not going to have different tags per project, it is easy what you are doing, which is setting semver.tagPrefix=v in a gradle.properties file.

The semver.project.tagPrefix=v is for compatibility issues, but you can keep it too as it is safer as some plugins are not respecting the configuration phase correctly.

[bric3]

Oh OK, I need both the version in the gradle file and in the properties file. So I now have this

build.gradle.kts	gradle.properties
semver { tagPrefix.set("v") }	semver.tagPrefix=v

and the next version is printed accordingly to the stage e.g. snapshot : v0.0.2-SNAPSHOT (i.e. with the other mentioned issue).

[JavierSegoviaCordoba]

Hi @bric3!

I think I set the default version to 0.1.0 when there is no tag in the branch, so probably 0.0.1-rc.1 is caused by a bug when there is no tag.

-SNAPSHOT versions AFAIK are treated differently in Gradle. Based on semantic versioning, 1.2.3-SNAPSHOT is higher than 1.2.3-rc.1 as S is higher than R, but in the Gradle version ordering it isn't, as rc is considered higher than SNAPSHOT. I added this rule specifically because there is a special repository for snapshots, but I should add the rest of the rules too (like dev one).

Tools like Dependabot, Renovate, third-party plugins like Ben Manes one, or a future Gradle official plugin allow updating libraries automatically respecting those rules.

So supposing you are publishing the version 1.2.3-rc.1, and with each new commit, you want to publish the typical SNAPSHOT which is indeed ahead of 1.2.3-rc.1, if it is published with the same core, 1.2.3-SNAPSHOT, it will considered lower than 1.2.3-rc.1 which is not true, that is the reason the plugin set the version to 1.2.4-SNAPSHOT.

I could add a flag to toggle this behavior, but I would like to know your opinion about the mentioned problem before adding it.

[bric3]

Maybe having the property might be interesting for consumers that still require an old version of Gradle, but this may be not worth it as time passes and gradle is already pushing the first RC of 8.0.

[bric3]

Also actually in #92 it's starting from 7.0, not 6.9 ;)

[JavierSegoviaCordoba]

@bric3 I am not a fan of keeping compatibility with old versions except if it is a "real bug" in my plugin that should be backported, even more here as I am not sure if Renovate keeps different ordering for each Gradle version.

They can stick to an old version of my plugin for that until they can upgrade Gradle.

[JavierSegoviaCordoba]

Thank you again for your investigation, I added a comment to simplify the conclusion of our discussion to mark it as the answer.

[bric3]

you're welcome :)
More thanks for the plugin !

[JavierSegoviaCordoba]

As @bric3 mentioned this behavior changed on 7.0+ and it is fixed for the Semver plugin here #92

Typically this point lead me to believe snapshots are actually higher than RCs

The strings rc, snapshot, final, ga, release and sp are considered higher than any other string part (sorted in this order): 1.0-zeta < 1.0-rc < 1.0-snapshot < 1.0-final < 1.0-ga < 1.0-release < 1.0-sp < 1.0.