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Versioning with Git Tags and Conventional Commits

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posted on 2024-05-30, 22:14 authored by Alexander VeseyAlexander Vesey

When performing software development, a basic practice is the versioning and version control of the software. In many models of development, such as DevSecOps, version control includes much more than the source code but also the infrastructure configuration, test suites, documentation and many more artifacts. Multiple DevSecOps maturity models consider version control a basic practice. This includes the OWASP DevSecOps Maturity Model as well as the SEI Platform Independent Model. The dominant tool for performing version control of source code and other human readable files is git. This is the tool that backs popular source code management platforms, such as GitLab and GitHub. At its most basic use, git is excellent at incorporating changes and allowing movement to different versions or revisions of a project being tracked. However, one downside is the mechanism git uses to name the versions. Git versions or commit IDs are a SHA-1 hash. This problem is not unique to git. Many tools used for source control solve the problem of how to uniquely identify a set of changes from any other in a similar way. In mercurial, another source code management tool a changeset is identified by a 160-bit identifier. This means to refer to a version in git, one may have to specify an ID such as 521747298a3790fde1710f3aa2d03b55020575aa (or the shorter but no less descriptive 52174729). This is not a good way for developers or users to refer to versions of software. Git understands this and so has tags that allow assignment of human readable names to these versions. This is an extra step after creating a commit message and ideally is based on the changes introduced in the commit. This is duplication of effort and a step that could be missed. This leads to the central question: How can we automate the assignment of versions (through tags) automatically? This blog post explores my work on extending the conventional commit paradigm to enable automatic semantic versioning with git tags to streamline the development and deployment of software products. This automation is intended to save development time and prevent issues with manual versioning.

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This material is based upon work funded and supported by the Department of Defense under Contract No. FA8702-15-D-0002 with Carnegie Mellon University for the operation of the Software Engineering Institute, a federally funded research and development center. The view, opinions, and/or findings contained in this material are those of the author(s) and should not be construed as an official Government position, policy, or decision, unless designated by other documentation. References herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by Carnegie Mellon University or its Software Engineering Institute. This report was prepared for the SEI Administrative Agent AFLCMC/AZS 5 Eglin Street Hanscom AFB, MA 01731-2100. NO WARRANTY. THIS CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INSTITUTE MATERIAL IS FURNISHED ON AN "AS-IS" BASIS. CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY MAKES NO WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, AS TO ANY MATTER INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR PURPOSE OR MERCHANTABILITY, EXCLUSIVITY, OR RESULTS OBTAINED FROM USE OF THE MATERIAL. CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY DOES NOT MAKE ANY WARRANTY OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO FREEDOM FROM PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. [DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A] This material has been approved for public release and unlimited distribution. Please see Copyright notice for non-US Government use and distribution.

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