How to treat one lib in multi-lib repo differently (always marked as preview)?

[egil]

I have a repository that includes multiple libraries. One of the libraries is experimental, so when I do a dotnet pack, I want its version to retain the preview version suffix as with unstable releases, even if the rest of the libraries does not have this.

This is my current version.json:

// https://github.com/bUnit-dev/bUnit/blob/main/version.json
{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dotnet/Nerdbank.GitVersioning/main/src/NerdBank.GitVersioning/version.schema.json",
  "version": "1.26-preview",
  "assemblyVersion": {
    "precision": "revision"
  },
  "nuGetPackageVersion": {
    "semVer": 2.0
  },
  "publicReleaseRefSpec": [
    "^refs/heads/stable$"
  ],
  "cloudBuild": {
    "buildNumber": {
      "enabled": true
    }
  },
  "release": {
    "branchName": "release/v{version}",
    "firstUnstableTag": "preview"
  },
  "pathFilters": [
    "./src"
  ]
}

The project I want to always be marked as experimental/preview is this: https://github.com/bUnit-dev/bUnit/blob/main/src/bunit.web.query/bunit.web.query.csproj

[AArnott]

The best way you can do it today is to add a src/bunit.web.query/version.json file with content like this:

{
 "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dotnet/Nerdbank.GitVersioning/main/src/NerdBank.GitVersioning/version.schema.json",
  "version": "1.26-preview",
  "inherit": "true"
}

The inherit part keeps you from having to double up on everything. You'll still have to double up on the version number, unfortunately. But having the unique copy of the version property allows that one project to retain the -preview suffix.

[egil]

I'm currently managing versions by doing nbgv prepare-release --versionIncrement minor at the root level. Do I need to change that with the nested version.json?

[AArnott]

Yes, you'd have to edit that one manually.
Not a great story, to be sure. I'm open to proposals to improve it.

[egil]

Ok.

Just so I understand correctly, if I run dotnet pack from my stable branch with the version number in the root version.json file is 1.25, i.e. without the -preview suffix, and if I add a version.json in my "experimental" projects folder and it has the version set to 1.25-preview, will dotnet pack will create a preview package for that project?

Or so I need to override other properties too?

[AArnott]

Just the additional version.json file should do it. But it needs to be committed before you'll see the full effect, as normal for such a file.

[mconnew]

Yes, you'd have to edit that one manually. Not a great story, to be sure. I'm open to proposals to improve it.

How about when the inherit property is set to true, you enable usage of a string substitution inside the version string which refers to the inherited version. You could have multiple substitution options for the full version, and each of the components (major, minor, patch, revision, tag etc). So you could use the value "{version}-preview" if you want the full version and add to it. If you have a suffix tag on the inherited version, then you could instead use "{major}.{minor}-preview".

[AArnott]

If it's important that nbgv get-version return this alternative preview version, then yes version.json needs to be able to encode what you're saying. But if it's something that you just need msbuild to be able to form, I've done this in some repos with a simple 3-line target that runs after GetBuildVersion and sets a -prerelease tag on the version that NB.GV computes.