How to implement "fixed" app versioning?

[ernestasjuska]

Hi,

We would like to use app versions as they are specified in the source code and not increment them using CI/CD. Created GitHub packages should have incremental versions though.

We have to release apps for both AppSource and on-prem customers (BC24 and above). We don't generate runtime packages using CI/CD and create them manually when needed.

These are our current versioning strategies:

• <BcMajor>.<BcMinor>.<AppReleaseMajor>.<AppReleaseMinor> - "old versioning"
• <AppReleaseMajor>.<AppReleaseMinor><BcMajor>.<BcMinor> - "new versioning"

The BC version part is mainly simbolic and is only used to distinguish apps for different BC versions, e.g. we can have apps 125.0.24.0 (for BC24, BC25) and 125.0.26.0 (for BC26) for app release 125.0.

Our branching strategy is:

• WIP branch - normal development usually on the latest or second to latest BC major version
• code/bcXX branches - code branches for specific BC versions we have to support - we merge code here from WIP (mainly we use ladder like merging WIP -> code/bc26 -> code/bc25 -> code/bc24 that eliminates the need to make same changes multiple times).
• releases/bcXX branches - code branches for released apps - we merge code from code/bcXX branch to releases/bcXX branch using git commit-tree to ensure code/bcXX and release/bcXX code matches exactly after the release. IMHO, we should use Git tags here and remove the need for release branches but I never get the time to do it.

CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps runs after pushes to code/bcXX and release/bcXX branches. Apps build from code/bcXX and releases/bcXX goes to prerelease and release folders in our network share. We would like to modernize and use artifacts/package store.

I would like to at least move our library apps to AL-Go and use a single repo for all of them. Each app may have a different version and if possible I would like to not have to increment app version if there are no code changes.

App Licensing (depends on Softera Baltic Common Functions)
Softera Baltic Common Functions
Softera Baltic Logging

I would like hear your suggestions on how we should proceed.

Thanks.