How can I auto increment the C assembly version via our CI platform Hudson

Question

Myself and my group are horrendous at incrementing assembly version numbers and we frequently ship assemblies with 1 0 0 0 versions   Obviously  this causes a lot of headaches   We re getting a lot better with our practices via our CI platform and I d really like to set it up to auto increment the values within the assemblyinfo cs file so that the versions of our assemblies are auto updated with the code changes in that assembly   I had previously setup  before we found Hudson  a way to increment the value through either msbuild or the command line  can t remember   but with Hudson  that will update the SVN repository and trigger ANOTHER build  That would result in a slow infinite loop as Hudson polls SVN every hour   Is having Hudson increment the version number a bad idea  What would be an alternative way to do it   Ideally  my criteria for a solution would be one that    Increments the build number in assemblyinfo cs before a build Only increments the build number in assemblies that have changed   This may not be possible as Hudson wipes out the project folder every time it does a build Commits the changed assemblyinfo cs into the code repository  currently VisualSVN  Does not cause Hudson to trigger a new build the next time it scans for changes   Working this out in my head  I could easily come up with a solution to most of this through batch files   commands  but all of my ideas would cause Hudson to trigger a new build the next time it scans   I m not looking for someone to do everything for me  just point me in the right direction  maybe a technique to get Hudson to ignore certain SVN commits  etc   Everything I ve found so far is just an article explaining how to get the version number automatically incremented  nothing takes into account a CI platform that could be spun into an infinite loop

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As a continuation of MikeS s answer I wanted to add that VS   Visual Studio Visualization and Modeling SDK needs to be installed for this to work  and you need to  modify the project file as well  Should also be mentioned I use Jenkins as build server running on a windows 2008 R2 server box with version module  where I get the BUILD NUMBER   My Text Template file version tt looks like this   lt    template debug  false  hostspecific  false  language  C     gt   lt    output extension   cs    gt   lt   var build   Environment GetEnvironmentVariable  BUILD NUMBER    build   build    null    0    int Parse build  ToString    var revision   Environment GetEnvironmentVariable   BuildVersion    revision   revision    null    5 0 0 0    revision        gt  using System Reflection   assembly  AssemblyVersion   lt   revision  gt      assembly  AssemblyFileVersion   lt   revision  gt       I have the following in the Property Groups   lt PropertyGroup gt       lt TransformOnBuild gt true lt  TransformOnBuild gt       lt OverwriteReadOnlyOutputFiles gt true lt  OverwriteReadOnlyOutputFiles gt       lt TransformOutOfDateOnly gt false lt  TransformOutOfDateOnly gt   lt  PropertyGroup gt    after import of Microsoft CSharp targets  I have this  dependant of where you install VS   lt Import Project  C  Program Files  x86  MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio TextTemplating v10 0 Microsoft TextTemplating targets    gt    On my build  server I then have the following script to run the text transformation before the actual build  to get the last changeset number on TFS  set  Path  C  Build Source foo   pushd   Path     ProgramFiles x86   Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 Common7 IDE tf exe  history    r  noprompt  stopafter 1  Version W  gt  bar FOR  f  tokens 1    foo in   findstr  R    0-9  0-9    bar   do set  BuildVersion 5 0  BUILD NUMBER    foo del bar popd  echo  BUILD NUMBER  echo   BuildVersion  cd C  Program Files  x86  Jenkins jobs MyJob workspace MyProject MSBuild MyProject csproj  t TransformAll       lt rest of bld script gt    This way I can keep track of builds AND changesets  so if I haven t checked anything in since last build  the last digit should not change  however I might have made changes to the build process  hence the need for the second last number  Of course if you make multiple check-ins before a build you only get the last change reflected in the version  I guess you could concatenate of that is required   I m sure you can do something fancier and call TFS directly from within the tt Template  however this works for me   I can then get my version at runtime like this  Assembly assembly   Assembly GetExecutingAssembly    FileVersionInfo fvi   FileVersionInfo GetVersionInfo assembly Location   return fvi FileVersion

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This is a simpler mechanism   It simply involves the addition of a Windows Batch command task build step before the MSBuild step and the use of a simple find and replace program  FART    The Batch Step  fart --svn -r AssemblyInfo cs   assembly  AssemblyVersion   1 0 0 0        assembly  AssemblyVersion   1 0  BUILD NUMBER   SVN REVISION       if  ERRORLEVEL   0 exit  b 1 fart --svn -r AssemblyInfo cs   assembly  AssemblyFileVersion   1 0 0 0        assembly  AssemblyFileVersion   1 0  BUILD NUMBER   SVN REVISION       if  ERRORLEVEL   0 exit  b 1 exit  b 0   If you are using source control other than svn change the --svn option for the appropriate one for your scm environment   Download Fart

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Hudson can be configured to ignore changes to certain paths and files so that it does not prompt a new build    On the job configuration page  under Source Code Management  click the Advanced button  In the Excluded Regions box you enter one or more regular expression to match exclusions   For example to ignore changes to the version properties file you can use    MyProject trunk version properties   This will work for languages other than C  and allows you to store your version info within subversion

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Here is an elegant solution that requires a little work upfront when adding a new project but handles the process very easily   The idea is that each project links to a Solution file that only contains the assembly version information   So your build process only has to update a single file and all of the assembly versions pull from the one file upon compilation   Steps    Add a class to you solution file   cs file  I named min SharedAssemblyProperties cs Remove all of the cs information from that new file Cut the assembly information from an AssemblyInfo file   assembly  AssemblyVersion  1 0 0 0     assembly  AssemblyFileVersion  1 0 0 0    Add the statement  using System Reflection   to the file and then paste data into your new cs file  ex SharedAssemblyProperties cs  Add an existing item to you project  wait    read on before adding the file  Select the file and before you click Add  click the dropdown next to the add button and select  Add As Link   Repeat steps 5 and 6 for all existing and new projects in the solution   When you add the file as a link  it stores the data in the project file and upon compilation pulls the assembly version information from this one file   In you source control  you add a bat file or script file that simply increments the SharedAssemblyProperties cs file and all of your projects will update their assembly information from that file

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I am assuming one might also do this with a text template where you create the assembly attributes in question on the fly from the environment like AssemblyVersion tt does below    lt    template debug  false  hostspecific  false  language  C     gt   lt    output extension   cs    gt   lt   var build   Environment GetEnvironmentVariable  BUILD NUMBER    build   build    null    0    int Parse build  ToString    var revision   Environment GetEnvironmentVariable  SVN REVISION    revision   revision    null    0    int Parse revision  ToString          gt  using System Reflection   assembly  AssemblyVersion  1 0  lt   build  gt   lt   revision  gt      assembly  AssemblyFileVersion  1 0  lt   build  gt   lt   revision  gt

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I decided to use a couple of methods using a prebuild Powershell script https   gist github com bradjolicoeur e77c508089aea6614af3  to increment on each successful build then in Global asax I ve going something like this        We are using debug configuration  so increment our builds    if  System Diagnostics Debugger IsAttached            string version   System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly                                                           GetName                                                           Version                                                         ToString           var psi   new ProcessStartInfo   svn    commit -m   Version      version     n             psi WorkingDirectory     C  CI Projects myproject         Process Start psi          I still think the whole process is overcomplicated and I m going to look into a more efficient method of achieving the same result   I wanted this mainly for passing the version into SVN and then into Jenkin s without too many addtional tools

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NET does this for you   In your AssemblyInfo cs file  set your assembly version to major minor    for example  1 0      When you build your project the version is auto generated   The build and revision numbers are generated based on the date  using the unix epoch  I believe   The build is based on the current day  and the revision is based on the number of seconds since midnight

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Here s what I did  for stamping the AssemblyFileVersion attribute   Removed the AssemblyFileVersion from AssemblyInfo cs  Add a new  empty  file called AssemblyFileInfo cs to the project   Install the MSBuild community tasks toolset on the hudson build machine or as a NuGet dependency in your project   Edit the project  csproj  file   it s just an msbuild file  and add the following   Somewhere there ll be a  lt PropertyGroup gt  stating the version  Change that so it reads e g     lt Major gt 1 lt  Major gt    lt Minor gt 0 lt  Minor gt    lt  --Hudson sets BUILD NUMBER and SVN REVISION -- gt    lt Build gt   BUILD NUMBER  lt  Build gt    lt Revision gt   SVN REVISION  lt  Revision gt    Hudson provides those env variables you see there when the project is built on hudson  assuming it s fetched from subversion    At the bottom of the project file  add    lt Import Project    MSBuildExtensionsPath  MSBuildCommunityTasks MSBuild Community Tasks Targets  Condition  Exists    MSBuildExtensionsPath  MSBuildCommunityTasks MSBuild Community Tasks Targets      gt     lt Target Name  BeforeBuild  Condition  Exists    MSBuildExtensionsPath  MSBuildCommunityTasks MSBuild Community Tasks Targets    gt       lt Message Text  Version    Major    Minor    Build    Revision     gt       lt AssemblyInfo CodeLanguage  CS  OutputFile  AssemblyFileInfo cs  AssemblyFileVersion    Major    Minor    Build    Revision   AssemblyConfiguration    Configuration   Condition    Revision            gt     lt  Target gt    This uses the MSBuildCommunityTasks to generate the AssemblyFileVersion cs to include an AssemblyFileVersion attribute before the project is built  You could do this for any all of the version attributes if you want   The result is  whenever you issue a hudson build  the resulting assembly gets an AssemblyFileVersion of 1 0 HUDSON BUILD NR SVN REVISION e g  1 0 6 2632   which means the 6 th build   in hudson  buit from the subversion revision 2632

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So  we have a project with one solution that contains several projects that have assemblies with different version numbers   After investigating several of the above methods  I just implemented a build step to run a Powershell script that does a find-and-replace on the AssemblyInfo cs file  I still use the 1 0   version number in source control  and Jenkins just manually updates the version number before msbuild runs   dir    Properties AssemblyInfo cs       cat            -replace     s    assembly  AssemblyVersion                    1 assembly  AssemblyVersion     2  build        Out-File    -Encoding  UTF8    dir    Properties AssemblyInfo cs       cat            -replace     s    assembly  AssemblyFileVersion                    1 assembly  AssemblyFileVersion     2  build        Out-File    -Encoding  UTF8      I added the -Encoding  UTF8  option because git started treating the  cs file as binary files if I didn t  Granted  this didn t matter  since I never actually commit the result  it just came up as I was testing   Our CI environment already has a facility to associate the Jenkins build with the particular git commit  thanks Stash plugin    so I don t worry that there s no git commit with the version number attached to it

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My solution doesn t require the addition of external tools or scripting languages --it s pretty much guaranteed to work on your build machine   I solve this problem in several parts   First  I have created a BUILD BAT file that converts the Jenkins BUILD NUMBER parameter into an environment variable   I use Jenkins s  Execute Windows batch command  function to run the build batch file by entering the following information for the Jenkins build          build bat --build id  BUILD ID  -build number  BUILD NUMBER    In the build environment  I have a build bat file that starts as follows        rem build bat      set BUILD ID Unknown      set BUILD NUMBER 0       parse command line      IF NOT   1                 IF   1    -build id                 SET BUILD ID  2              SHIFT                         IF   1    -build number                 SET BUILD NUMBER  2              SHIFT                     SHIFT          GOTO  parse command line             REM your build continues with the environmental variables set      MSBUILD EXE YourProject sln   Once I did that  I right-clicked on the project to be built in Visual Studio s Solution Explorer pane and selected Properties  select Build Events  and entered the following information as the Pre-Build Event Command Line  which automatically creates a  cs file containing build number information based on current environment variable settings        set VERSION FILE   ProjectDir  Properties VersionInfo cs      if   BUILD NUMBER     goto no buildnumber set      goto buildnumber set       no buildnumber set      set BUILD NUMBER 0       buildnumber set      if not exist  VERSION FILE  goto no version file      del  q  VERSION FILE        no version file      echo using System Reflection   gt  gt   VERSION FILE       echo using System Runtime CompilerServices   gt  gt   VERSION FILE       echo using System Runtime InteropServices   gt  gt   VERSION FILE       echo  assembly  AssemblyVersion  0 0  BUILD NUMBER  1     gt  gt   VERSION FILE       echo  assembly  AssemblyFileVersion  0 0  BUILD NUMBER  1     gt  gt   VERSION FILE    You may need to adjust to your build taste   I build the project manually once to generate an initial Version cs file in the Properties directory of the main project   Lastly  I manually include the Version cs file into the Visual Studio solution by dragging it into the Solution Explorer pane  underneath the Properties tab for that project   In future builds  Visual Studio then reads that  cs file at Jenkins build time and gets the correct build number information out of it

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I ve never actually seen that 1 0   feature work in VS2005 or VS2008  Is there something that needs to be done to set VS to increment the values   If AssemblyInfo cs is hardcoded with 1 0    then where are the real build revision stored   After putting 1 0   in AssemblyInfo  we can t use the following statement because ProductVersion now has an invalid value - it s using 1 0   and not the value assigned by VS   Version version   new Version Application ProductVersion     Sigh - this seems to be one of those things that everyone asks about but somehow there s never a solid answer  Years ago I saw solutions for generating a revision number and saving it into AssemblyInfo as part of a post-build process   I hoped that sort of dance wouldn t be required for VS2008   Maybe VS2010

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A simple alternative is to let the C  environment increment the assembly version for you by setting the version attribute to major minor    as described in the AssemblyInfo file template    You may be looking for a more comprehensive solution  though   EDIT  Response to the question in a comment    From AssemblyInfo cs      Version information for an assembly consists of the following four values             Major Version         Minor Version          Build Number         Revision       You can specify all the values or you can default the Build and Revision Numbers     by using the     as shown below      assembly  AssemblyVersion  1 0

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