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git-semver

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git-semver

A CLI tool to generate semantic versioning compliant tags for your git repositories.

Install

  • Download the file from here
  • Assign required permissions sudo chmod -R 755 git-semver
  • Run sudo mv git-semver /usr/local/bin/git-semver

Usage

Below is the signature for command

$ git semver <patch|minor|major> [options]

Where patch, minor or major specifies the type of release that you are about to make.

  • patch use this option when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes
  • minor use this option when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner
  • major use this option when you make incompatible API changes

Options

In addition to the type of release i.e. patch, major or minor, you can add following options to modify the behavior of command

  • --fetch Fetch the remote tags before applying the version (Recommended)
  • --prefix Prefix to prepend to the tag e.g. --prefix=v to prepend v i.e. for tags similar to v1.0.1
  • --postfix Append to the tag e.g --postfix="-live" to append -live to generate tags similar to 1.2.3-live

Examples

Find some of the usage examples below

Tag Examples

  • Below command creates a patch release i.e. increment the last part of the tag by 1 e.g. it will generate x.y.1, if the last tag was x.y.0 
$ git semver patch
  • Below command creates a minor release i.e. middle part of the tag will be incremented e.g. if the last tag was x.2.z then it will become x.3.z 
$ git semver minor
  • Below command will create a major release i.e. the first part of the tag will be incremented e.g. if the last tag was 0.y.z then it will become 1.y.z 
$ git semver major

Fetching Remote Tags

If you would want to fetch the remote tags before creating the tag, then use the --fetch option. For example

$ git semver patch --fetch

Above command will make sure that the remote tags are fetched before creating a new tag. On a sidenote, it is recommended to add this flag e.g. if you are working in a team it is quite possible that you might not have some tag locally and creating a tag without fetching might end up in duplicated tags.

Prefix and Postfix Usage

  1. Prefix
    If you want to create a release while prefixing some keyword e.g. v then you can provide that using --prefix option. For example: 
$ git semver patch --prefix=v

The above command will generate tags with v prefixed e.g. v1.0.0 or v1.3.2.

  1. Postfix
    If you would like to append something to the end of created tag you can use --postfix option. For example, if you would want to append -dev to the tag, you can do the below 
$ git semver patch --postfix=-dev

This will result in something along the lines of 3.5.1-dev depending upon the last tag

A Real World Example of Semantic Versioning

Some useful examples of semantic versioning are given below:

v0.0.0 // New project
v0.1.0 // Add some functionality
v0.2.0 // Add other new functionality
v0.2.1 // Fix bug
v0.3.0 // Add some functionality
v0.3.1 // Fix bug
v0.3.2 // Fix bug
v0.3.3 // Fix bug
v0.3.4 // Fix bug
v0.4.0 // Add some functionality
v0.4.1 // Fix bug
v0.4.2 // Fix bug
v1.0.0 // Code is being used in production
v1.1.0 // Add some functionality
v1.2.0 // Add other new functionality
v1.2.1 // Fix bug
v2.0.0 // Implement changes that causes backwards incompatible

Contribution

Feel free to fork, improve, create issues and spread the word.

License

MIT © Zeeshan Ahmed



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