Help with bumping the patch version while having gitversion to default to minor

[pefoo]

Hi,

I am stuck with gitversion configuration and could use some help. I am not even sure if the behavior I try to achieve is possible at all.

❯ dotnet-gitversion.exe /version
6.3.0+Branch.main.Sha.74ac886dbb8f9bf037a0a7cc19f5f04f03e691c9

Goal

• Release each and every commit on main (thus, use ContinuousDeployment mode). Commits get automatically tagged for this purpose
• Automatically bump the Minor version for feature / main branches and after merging them to main
• Allowing contributors to use commit messages to change the version parts that get incremented
  • Allow contributors to bump the major version for breaking changes
  • Allow contributors to bump the patch version only for fixes

Current configuration

Most likely bullshit :D

mode: ContinuousDeployment
major-version-bump-message: '\s?(breaking|major|breaking\schange)'
minor-version-bump-message: '(adds?|features?|minor)\b'
patch-version-bump-message: '\s?(fix|patch)'
no-bump-message: '\+semver:\s?(none|skip)'
branches:
  main:
    increment: Minor
    regex: ^master$|^main$
    is-main-branch: true
  anyOther:
    increment: Minor
    regex: ^(?!master$|main$).*

Issue

• Using above configuration bumps Minor by default (as expected)
• Using above configuration allows me to bump Major by adding +semver: major
• However, it seems I am not able to decrease the bump level. Adding +semver: patch) dos not work

It almost feels like I am not able to 'decrease the default increment version part'

Not working patch increment

This is a simplified workflow but shows my current problem pretty well.

❯ git l -n2
# This should have been a patch -> increment patch level
* 75b783e (HEAD -> master) 25 minutes ago +semver: patch (...)
# This is version 3.0.0 with a tag 
* 9caf021 (tag: 3.0.0) 28 minutes ago Squashed commit of the following: (...)

# gitversion increments the minor version
❯ dotnet-gitversion
{
  "AssemblySemFileVer": "3.1.0.0",
  "AssemblySemVer": "3.1.0.0",
  "BranchName": "master",
  "BuildMetaData": null,
  "CommitDate": "2025-08-26",
  "CommitsSinceVersionSource": 1,
  "EscapedBranchName": "master",
  "FullBuildMetaData": "Branch.master.Sha.75b783e97896d6ff1c9ec1940589230bdbe1194b",
  "FullSemVer": "3.1.0",
  "InformationalVersion": "3.1.0+Branch.master.Sha.75b783e97896d6ff1c9ec1940589230bdbe1194b",
  "Major": 3,
  "MajorMinorPatch": "3.1.0",
  "Minor": 1,
  "Patch": 0,
  "PreReleaseLabel": "",
  "PreReleaseLabelWithDash": "",
  "PreReleaseNumber": null,
  "PreReleaseTag": "",
  "PreReleaseTagWithDash": "",
  "SemVer": "3.1.0",
  "Sha": "75b783e97896d6ff1c9ec1940589230bdbe1194b",
  "ShortSha": "75b783e",
  "UncommittedChanges": 0,
  "VersionSourceSha": "9caf0219f39d5f97235328bdcdd77d147c613c3a",
  "WeightedPreReleaseNumber": 60000
}

Working major increment

❯ git l -n3
* ac78aca (HEAD -> master) 7 seconds ago +semver: major (...)
* 75b783e 28 minutes ago +semver: patch (...)
* 9caf021 (tag: 3.0.0) 31 minutes ago Squashed commit of the following: (...)

❯ dotnet-gitversion
{
  "AssemblySemFileVer": "4.0.0.0",
  "AssemblySemVer": "4.0.0.0",
  "BranchName": "master",
  "BuildMetaData": null,
  "CommitDate": "2025-08-26",
  "CommitsSinceVersionSource": 2,
  "EscapedBranchName": "master",
  "FullBuildMetaData": "Branch.master.Sha.ac78acaa94bfd91a701e0108a0734333c1709b82",
  "FullSemVer": "4.0.0",
  "InformationalVersion": "4.0.0+Branch.master.Sha.ac78acaa94bfd91a701e0108a0734333c1709b82",
  "Major": 4,
  "MajorMinorPatch": "4.0.0",
  "Minor": 0,
  "Patch": 0,
  "PreReleaseLabel": "",
  "PreReleaseLabelWithDash": "",
  "PreReleaseNumber": null,
  "PreReleaseTag": "",
  "PreReleaseTagWithDash": "",
  "SemVer": "4.0.0",
  "Sha": "ac78acaa94bfd91a701e0108a0734333c1709b82",
  "ShortSha": "ac78aca",
  "UncommittedChanges": 0,
  "VersionSourceSha": "9caf0219f39d5f97235328bdcdd77d147c613c3a",
  "WeightedPreReleaseNumber": 60000
}

Is there a way to achieve my intended behavior with a configuration?

I know I could change the default increment to patch and use +semver: Minor. But I would prefer to use a sane default that matches our common use cases to reduce the risk of creating a wrong version.

[HHobeck]

Please see #3494 (comment) and #4143 (reply in thread)

The following feature is ready for implementation:

• [FEATURE]: Support of '=semver: none|minor|major|patch' bump message to suppress the version increment #4144

[pefoo]

Thank you. This helped. Well at least it showed me, that my goal can't be achieved without the feature you linked.

Maybe we can come up with a temporary solution until this feature is implemented. Do you know of any better way to achieve (at least something similar?) than 'reducing' the default bump to Patch for all branches and relying on PR descriptions (more) to set the right version?

A bit more context: The repos we use have a protected main branch. PRs are mandatory. PRs get squashed (policy). The resulting commit is created from the PR title + PR description.

[HHobeck]

Maybe we can come up with a temporary solution until this feature is implemented.

If you change the increment on the main branch to none/patch then it should be working.

Edit: Please always define the workflow property to make it clear what base template you are using. (https://gitversion.net/docs/reference/configuration)

[pefoo]

Changing the default increment to none does not really fit our requirements. This might lead to package version conflicts and artificial PRs just to fix this (this is my current experience with manual versioning).
The lowest increment for main should be patch.

I came up with something I would consider a workaround

mode: ContinuousDeployment
major-version-bump-message: '\s?(breaking|major|breaking\schange)'
minor-version-bump-message: '(adds?|features?|minor)\b'
patch-version-bump-message: '\s?(fix|patch)'
no-bump-message: '\+semver:\s?(none|skip)'
workflow: GitHubFlow/v1
branches:
  main:
    # 'downgrading' the bump from minor to patch is not supported.
    increment: patch
    regex: ^master$|^main$
    is-main-branch: true
  hotfix:
    label: '{BranchName}'
    increment: Patch
    regex: ^(hot)?fix(es)?[\/-](?<BranchName>.+)
  anyOther:
    increment: Minor
    regex: ^(?!master$|main$).*

• Most likely version increment (in our case minor) is configured to be used for pretty much all branches
• This leads to (mostly) correct prerelease versions for branches
• fix or hotfix branches get the minor increment out of the box
• Main branch is configured to increment patch
• Contributors and reviewers must make sure, to double check the existence of +semver: Minor|Major for PRs

I am quite new to gitversion (obviously). Any comments on this workaround are appreciated :)