How do I apply an RTM tag and release versions? MinVer consistently adds a prerelease versions to my releases

[jeffward01]

Hello all,

I have reviewed the documentation deeply, and also have researched very much what a RTM tag is. I cannot find on any Microsoft or MinVer docs how I can add an RTM tag. I understand a RTM tag means 'Release to Market', however, I do not know how to add one.

My use case is that I have a dotnet cli package that I need to iterate the versions:

Such as:

1.1.1
1.1.2
1.1.3

Currently its:

1.1.1-alpha.0.2
1.1.1-alpha.0.3

I understand that if I want to increment the version, I can simply:

> git tag x.x.x <-- New version
> git push --tags

The issue is that -alpha.0.x is still applied.

How do I remove the pre-release tag?

Thanks!

[adamralph]

> git tag x.x.x <-- New version
> git push --tags

That is all that is required. If that isn't working, there must be something else wrong with your setup.

It may be best if you push a project to GitHub which demonstrates your problem.

[adamralph]

In the same way that MinVer appends the auto-increment per each commit, can MinVer auto-increment WITHOUT appending any pre-release tag?

I'm afraid not. This is explained in detail in How it works.

If you want to increment the patch number on every commit then I'm afraid MinVer is not the package you are looking for.

[jeffward01]

Thanks for the reply! Thats very helpful.

Last follow up question, if I use MinVer, how do I 'create a release' with only x.x.x (without any pre-release appended).

I ask because it seems as long as MinVer is 'active', the pre-release will always be appended.

So in the scenario that:

1. As a developer I am creating a CLI application
2. As a developer, I want to create releases that can be consumed by 'target audience' (developers)
3. As a developer, I want the releases to be in the format x.x.x
4. As a developer, I want to release pre-releases in the format x.x.x-prerelease.x.x (this is where MinVer comes in)
5. As a developer I want my target audience to know have the option between consuming a release and pre-release.

I think my understanding is wrong, but it seems to me that as long as MinVer is used within the project, the project cannot have a release with x.x.x. I do not see how options 3 and 5 can be accomplished with MinVer installed in the project. I think I am missing something, am I?

Does this mean that by using MinVer, the project is in 'perma-prerelease' mode?

I hope this makes sense!

[adamralph]

The first two lines in How it works—

• If the current commit has a version tag:
  • The version is used as-is.

So just create a tag with whatever version you want, e.g.

git tag 1.2.2

[nietras]

I was sad to see that it is not possible to make automatic versioning without pre-release being added by MinVer, as the question here pertains to. Same issue in that we don't want to have to tag every time we want to release but instead want to auto-release patch (or revision) incremented versions. That is instead just tag with vX.Y.0 and patch always being zero. And then increment with height after. It seems to me this would be possible if one could simply get a MinVerHeight property and use that directly in version. Or if not patch version then use it in revision version.

I think it could be a bit clearer in MinVer documentation that MinVer will always add a pre-release version suffix to any commit that is not "tagged". Unless you define or override the versions yourself. If I understand correctly.

[adamralph]

@nietras

we don't want to have to tag every time we want to release

That is the entire premise behind MinVer. It is a tag-and-then-release package. If you want to do something else then it's probably not the right package for you. IIRC Nerdbank.GitVersioning may do something closer to what you want.

I think it could be a bit clearer in MinVer documentation that MinVer will always add a pre-release version suffix to any commit that is not "tagged".

I think this is quite clear in How it works but please feel free to raise a PR if you find a way to make it clearer.