Auto Versioning in Visual Studio 2017 (.NET Core)

Question

I have spent the better part of a few hours trying to find a way to auto-increment versions in a .NETCoreApp 1.1 (Visual Studio 2017).

I know the the AssemblyInfo.cs

Answer 1

Thanks to @joelsand for pointing me in the right direction.

I had to change his answer slightly as when the DevOps Build ran, I got the following exception

The specified version string does not conform to the recommended format - major.minor.build.revision

I had to add the $(BUILD_BUILDNUMBER) at the end of major.minor.build section. To de-duplicate the actual version, I also use a version-prefix:

<PropertyGroup>
    <VersionPrefix>1.0.3</VersionPrefix>
    <Version Condition=" '$(BUILD_BUILDNUMBER)' == '' ">$(VersionPrefix)-local</Version>
    <Version Condition=" '$(BUILD_BUILDNUMBER)' != '' ">$(VersionPrefix)-$(BUILD_BUILDNUMBER)</Version>
</PropertyGroup>

Answer 2

We can use special parameter for dotnet publish -- version-suffix 1.2.3

For file version:

<AssemblyVersion Condition=" '$(VersionSuffix)' == '' ">0.0.1.0</AssemblyVersion>
<AssemblyVersion Condition=" '$(VersionSuffix)' != '' ">$(VersionSuffix)</AssemblyVersion>

For version:

<Version Condition=" '$(VersionSuffix)' == '' ">0.0.1</Version>
<Version Condition=" '$(VersionSuffix)' != '' ">$(VersionSuffix)</Version>

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet-publish?tabs=netcore21

--version-suffix <VERSION_SUFFIX>     Defines the value for the $(VersionSuffix) property in the project.

Answer 3

If you're using Visual Studio Team Services/TFS or some other CI build process to have versioning built-in, you can utilize msbuild's Condition attribute, for example:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <Version Condition=" '$(BUILD_BUILDNUMBER)' == '' ">0.0.1-local</Version>
    <Version Condition=" '$(BUILD_BUILDNUMBER)' != '' ">$(BUILD_BUILDNUMBER)</Version>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp1.1</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <Folder Include="wwwroot\" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore" Version="2.0.0" />
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore" Version="1.1.2" />
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Extensions.Caching.Memory" Version="1.1.2" />
  </ItemGroup>

</Project>

This will tell the .NET Core compiler to use whatever is in the BUILD_BUILDNUMBER environment variable if it's present, or fallback to 0.0.1-local if you're doing a build on your local machine.

Answer 4

dotnet build /p:AssemblyVersion=1.2.3.4

I was responding to: "has anyone figured out how to control version in .NET Core (or .NETStandard for that matter) projects." I found this question trying to solve this problem in the context of a CI build. I wanted to set the assembly version to the CI build number.

Answer 5

As an alternative, you can try fixed major number with a suffix based on current date:

  <PropertyGroup>
    <VersionPrefix>1</VersionPrefix>
    <VersionSuffix>$([System.DateTime]::UtcNow.ToString(yyMM)).$([System.DateTime]::UtcNow.ToString(ddHH)).$([System.DateTime]::UtcNow.ToString(mmss))</VersionSuffix>
    <Version Condition=" '$(VersionSuffix)' == '' ">$(VersionPrefix).0.0.1</Version>
    <Version Condition=" '$(VersionSuffix)' != '' ">$(VersionPrefix).$(VersionSuffix)</Version>
  </PropertyGroup>

Answer 6

Add <Deterministic>False</Deterministic> inside a <PropertyGroup> section  of .csproj

The workaround to make AssemblyVersion * working is described in “Confusing error message for wildcard in [AssemblyVersion] on .Net Core #22660”

Wildcards are only allowed if the build is not deterministic, which is the default for .Net Core projects. Adding <Deterministic>False</Deterministic> to csproj fixes the issue.

The reasons why .Net Core Developers consider Deterministic Builds beneficial described in http://blog.paranoidcoding.com/2016/04/05/deterministic-builds-in-roslyn.html and Compilers should be deterministic: same inputs generate same outputs #372

However if you are using TeamCity, TFS or other CI/CD tool, it's probably better to keep the version number controlled and incremented by them and pass to build as a parameter (as it was suggested in other answers) , e.g.

msbuild /t:build /p:Version=YourVersionNumber /p:AssemblyVersion=YourVersionNumber

Package number for NuGet packages

msbuild /t:pack /p:Version=YourVersionNumber