versioning-howto.md

Code versioning

This file will explain the procedure to follow when updating the version.

As we adhere to the GitFlow branching model, we will want to create a release/{NEXT_RELEASE} branch from the dev branch each time we're going to deploy a new release. This branch will later be merged into master and dev.

The steps are as follows:

1. Make sure the dev branch has all the changes that you want to appear in the next version.

2. Decide what version your new release should be. We adhere strictly to semantic versioning! Let's say you decide to update to version 1.2.3.

3. Add the changes to CHANGELOG.md.

4. Create the branch release/1.2.3 from dev using

   git checkout -b release/1.2.3

5. Run the script bumpversion.sh using

   sh bumpversion.sh [version type]

   This script takes a single optional argument specifying the version type, one of

   • --patch
   • --minor
   • --major

   to bump the version to the next patch, minor version or major version. See semantic versioning for more information.

   For our example, supposing we were on release 1.2.2, we would need to call

   sh bumpversion.sh --patch

   to bump the version to 1.2.3.

   It's purpose is to bump the version number in the pubspec.yaml file, create the version.txt file used by the Github Actions workflow, create a commit with message Bump version to 1.2.3 and tag the commit.

6. Merge the release/1.2.3 back into master and dev using

   git checkout master
   git merge release/1.2.3 --no-ff
   git checkout dev
   git merge release/1.2.3 --no-ff

   Note the --no-ff flag. It is important.

7. You can now safely delete the release/1.2.3 branch.

   git branch -d release/1.2.3