GitVersion to correctly update assembly version for master, dev, hotfix branches

Question

I am using GitVersion in an Azure DevOps pipeline to automate deployments, however I'm struggling to get the automatic versioning to work as I want.

The branch structure is like this:

• master - this is the main branch and where prod releases are done from
• dev - this is the current development version sits
• hotfix* - these are short-lived branches from master which are for hotfixes, usually in the form "hotfix-bug#99999"
• ** - any development is done in a branch off dev and merged back into dev, these don't have any specific naming convention

What I want to happen is:

• Pull requests from any branch into dev updates the pre-release number (e.g. 1.0.0 goes to 1.0.0-something)
• Pull requests from dev into master updates Minor (e.g. 1.0.0 goes to 1.1.0)
• Pull requests from any hotfix branch into master updates Patch (e.g. 1.0.0 goes to 1.0.1)

I want to avoid having to use git Tags to control the versioning because it means every pipeline has to run twice to get the correct version in the build.

Current workflow goes:

• Pull request is completed in DevOps
• This triggers pipeline
• Locally fetch changes from pull request
• Add tag to latest commit (e.g. 1.1.0)
• Push tags
• Re-run pipeline (now GitVersion takes desired version number)

My current GitVersion.yml file is below:

assembly-versioning-scheme: MajorMinorPatch
assembly-file-versioning-scheme: MajorMinorPatch
mode: ContinuousDelivery
tag-prefix: '[vV]'
continuous-delivery-fallback-tag: ci
major-version-bump-message: '\+semver:\s?(breaking|major)'
minor-version-bump-message: '\+semver:\s?(feature|minor)'
patch-version-bump-message: '\+semver:\s?(fix|patch)'
no-bump-message: '\+semver:\s?(none|skip)'
legacy-semver-padding: 4
build-metadata-padding: 4
commits-since-version-source-padding: 4
tag-pre-release-weight: 60000
commit-message-incrementing: Enabled
branches:
  develop:
    mode: ContinuousDeployment
    tag: alpha
    increment: Minor
    prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version: false
    track-merge-target: true
    regex: ^dev(elop)?(ment)?$
    source-branches: []
    tracks-release-branches: true
    is-release-branch: false
    is-mainline: false
    pre-release-weight: 0
  main:
    mode: ContinuousDelivery
    tag: ''
    increment: Patch
    prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version: true
    track-merge-target: false
    regex: ^master$|^main$
    source-branches:
    - develop
    - release
    tracks-release-branches: false
    is-release-branch: false
    is-mainline: true
    pre-release-weight: 55000
  release:
    mode: ContinuousDelivery
    tag: beta
    increment: None
    prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version: true
    track-merge-target: false
    regex: ^releases?[/-]
    source-branches:
    - develop
    - main
    - support
    - release
    tracks-release-branches: false
    is-release-branch: true
    is-mainline: false
    pre-release-weight: 30000
  feature:
    mode: ContinuousDelivery
    tag: '{BranchName}'
    increment: Inherit
    regex: ^features?[/-]
    source-branches:
    - develop
    - main
    - release
    - feature
    - support
    - hotfix
    pre-release-weight: 30000
  hotfix:
    mode: ContinuousDelivery
    tag: beta
    increment: Patch
    prevent-increment-of-merged-branch-version: false
    track-merge-target: false
    regex: ^hotfix(es)?[/-]
    source-branches:
    - release
    - main
    - support
    - hotfix
    tracks-release-branches: false
    is-release-branch: false
    is-mainline: false
    pre-release-weight: 30000
ignore:
  sha: []
increment: Inherit
commit-date-format: yyyy-MM-dd
merge-message-formats: {}
update-build-number: true

Answer 1

This is the config I'm now using which does I need/works with the workflow described in the question:

mode: Mainline
assembly-versioning-scheme: MajorMinorPatch
update-build-number: true
branches:
  main:
    tag: ''
    increment: Minor
    is-release-branch: true
    source-branches:
    - development
    - hotfix
  development:
    tag: beta
    increment: Patch
    regex: ^dev(elop)?(ment)?$
    is-release-branch: false
    source-branches: []
  hotfix:
    tag: ''
    increment: Patch
    regex: ^hotfix*
    is-release-branch: false