Versioning

Versions are driven by semantic commits and release tags. We do not infer a release version from branch names or build history.

Semantic commits

Use Conventional Commits for changes. The format is:

<type>[optional scope]: <description>

Common types are:

feat: a new feature
fix: a bug fix
docs: documentation-only changes
style: formatting or other non-functional changes
refactor: code changes without a feature or fix
perf: a performance improvement
test: tests
build: build or dependency changes
ci: continuous-integration changes
chore: maintenance work
revert: a reverted commit

Scopes are optional and identify the affected area, for example: feat(api): add health endpoint. Use a short, consistent, project-specific scope when one is useful.

Append ! after the type or scope for a breaking change, or include a BREAKING CHANGE: footer. For example:

feat(api)!: replace authentication endpoint

Version increments

The next release version is incremented from the previous release using only fix, feat, and breaking-change markers:

Major: any commit marked with ! or containing a BREAKING CHANGE: footer
Minor: otherwise, any feat commit
Patch: otherwise, any fix commit

Other commit types do not increment the version. If multiple applicable commits exist, the highest increment wins.

Build metadata

Builds that are not releases carry metadata identifying their source:

Pull requests: pr.<number>.sha.<sha>
Main branch: sha.<sha>

The main branch is labelled next for the upcoming release.

Releases

A tag is the release. The version is taken directly from the tag; it is never computed by the build system. Release tags must therefore contain the complete release version (for example, 1.2.3). The tag and the version exported to the .NET CLI are both 1.2.3; no v prefix is used.

Version action

Version calculation and commit validation are provided by a reusable action. It is written in Bash only and runs as the first step after checkout in each workflow.

The action selects commits according to the workflow ref:

Pull requests: commits belonging to the pull request only; commits already present on the target branch are excluded.
Main: commits since the previous release tag.
Release tags: no version is computed; the tag version is used directly.

The action then:

validates the applicable commit messages against the Conventional Commits format;
calculates the version from the previous release tag and the applicable commits, unless the current ref is a release tag; and
exports the calculated version and its label/build metadata as action outputs for later steps. Jobs are responsible for mapping those outputs to environment variables when needed.

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