vsntool - Lean-and-mean version bumping tool

The vsntool maintains git tags and a text file, VERSION, which tracks the current software's version number. It provides an easy method of bumping the major, mnior and patch versions of the software.

The authoritative version of a project is in the VERSION file. vsntool also automagically synchronizes this version number in several other auto-detected files in the repository for various frameworks and languages:

• NPM packages — package.json
• Expo (React Native) — app.json version and versionCode attributes
• Cordova — config.xml; both version= and android:versionCode attributes; plugin.xml version
• Erlang / OTP libraries — src/*.app.src
• Android — build.gradle version and versionCode

By using the vsntool commands, the version numbers are automatically patched in these files.

Installation

Install Elixir, then execute the following in a terminal:

mix escript.install hex vsntool

Usage

▶ vsntool
0.1.2-1-g88547df

Running vsntool without arguments runs git describe --tags, which retrieves the last version number, but appended with a unique identifier which describes the current commit. This is handy in CI systems and development setups where you often want to build or release snapshots which contain no official version.

To retrieve the last released version, run:

▶ vsntool last
0.1.2

(which is equivalent to cat VERSION).

The default branch on which the releases are being tagged is master or main. To change this, change the environment variable VSN_BRANCH.

When vsntool is run on a non-release branch, the branch name is added to the version:

▶ git checkout develop
▶ vsntool
0.1.2-1-develop.1-g88547df

Initialization

vsntool init initializes a VERSION file in a directory and ensures it has a git repository:

▶ mkdir ~/new-project; cd ~/new-project
▶ vsntool init
Initialized git repository
Version bump to 0.0.1 OK.

Version bumping

Once a repo has been initialized, you can use the bump_major, bump_minor and bump_patch commands to increase the version number:

▶ vsntool bump_patch
Version bump to 0.1.2 OK.

Note that vsntool will refuse to tag a commit twice:

▶ vsntool bump_patch
Current commit is already tagged (0.1.2)

To release a new version, do another commit before doing another version bump, or use the FORCE=true environment variable to force the version.

Development versions / Release candidates workflow

Usually after a release you want to set the current project version to a dev prefix to indicate that this is the current working version. You do this by specifying --dev as a flag:

▶ vsntool bump_minor --dev
Version bump to 0.1.0-dev OK.

A --dev bump will not create a git tag.

Once you are happy with your project, bump it to a release candidate:

▶ vsntool bump_rc
Version bump to 0.1.0-rc.0 OK.

And create as many release candidates after that as you want:

▶ vsntool bump_rc
Version bump to 0.1.0-rc.1 OK.

To promote an dev or rc version to a release, call vsntool release:

▶ vsntool release
Version bump to 0.1.0 OK.

Usage in Elixir projects

Tracking your Elixir project's version number is easy; in your mix.exs file, you don't hardcode the version number but instead read it from the VERSION file:

  def project do
    [
      app: :myproject,
      version: File.read!("VERSION")
      ...

This file is evaluated at compile time, so there is no runtime dependency on the existence of the VERSION file.

When releasing your library as dependency, do not forget to add the VERSION file to the list of to-be-packaged files:

  defp package do
    %{
      files: ["lib", "mix.exs", "*.md", "LICENSE", "VERSION"],
      ...

Usage with docker

Build the current project and tag it with the correct version:

▶ docker build . -t organisation/projectname:$(vsntool)

Plugins

vsntool "knows" about a few common places where version numbers are stored, and will detect these automatically, using a plugin system. The currently supported and shipped plugins are:

• Support for npm package.json files
• Expo (React Native)'s app.json, both version and versionCode
• Android apps, build.gradle, both versionName and versionCode
• Cordova apps, config.xml, both version and versionCode
• Cordova apps, plugin.xml

Bash / zsh completion

To enable command completion, add the following to your ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc:

complete -W "init bump_major bump_minor bump_patch last" vsntool

Building

vsntool is an Elixir project, but builds as an escript, a self-contained binary. To build it, you need to have Elixir installed, then run:

▶ make

This produces a fresh version of the vsntool binary in the root of the repository. Happy versioning!

Features / todo list

• Plugin system for updating version in framework-specific files
• Add support for dev versions (1.0.0-dev)
• Add support for release-candidate-like versions (1.0.0-rc1)
• Improve error reporting, error messages (stop using :os.cmd)
• Use artificery for command parsing