sem-tool

A simple tool for working with Semantic Versioning on the command line.

Semantic Versioning seems simple, but in many cases, it's not implemented correctly, and people only consider the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH cases. When this happens, you may find yourself needing to do surgery on lists of versions in a pipeline or even just to reason around someones releases.

The Rust ecosystem, as well as most Cloud Native patterns have adopted SemVer. Not everyone has, and sometimes a little grease is needed to get systems back on track where there's divergence.

It can be damaging to a project, when semantic versioning is only partially or incorrectly implemented. It's a foundational communication mechanism for engineers, and should be treated with the care and diligence it's owed.

This is a single tool to provide support for that purpse.

Opinions

Where appropriate opinions on the spec have been made, they have been listed in the CLI documentation.

Installing

cargo install sem-tool

Running

Your best place to start, is:

sem-tool --help

Output

Currently, the following output types are: yaml, text, json.

I favor the yaml output, and have made that the default.

Exit Status is available either by default in obvious cases, or by flag in less obvious cases.

Subcommands

filter-test

The filter-test subcommand will allow you to test a filter on a version.

# Passing test
$ sem-tool filter-test ">=1.0.3" 1.0.3
---
pass: true
$ echo $?
0

# Failing test
$ sem-tool filter-test ">=1.0.3" 1.0.1
---
pass: false
$ echo $?
1

explain

The explain subcommand will break down a version by components.

The sem-tool explain --help command has some useful information regarding "why" the output may appear "over-stringified" in the breakdown.

$ sem-tool explain 10.1.4-a.b.c+sda.4
---
major: 10
minor: 1
patch: 4
prerelease_string: a.b.c
prerelease:
- kind: Ascii
  value: a
- kind: Ascii
  value: b
- kind: Ascii
  value: c
build_metadata_string: sda.4
build-metadata:
- kind: Ascii
  value: sda
- kind: Numeric
  value: '4'

compare

# simple case
$ sem-tool compare 1.2.3 2.2.2
---
semantic_ordering: Less
lexical_ordering: Less
$ echo $?
0

# simple case with status code reporting enabled
$ sem-tool compare -e 1.2.3 2.2.2
---
semantic_ordering: Less
lexical_ordering: Less
$ echo $?
100

# comparing 2 "equal" versions
$ sem-tool compare 2.2.2+abc 2.2.2
---
semantic_ordering: Equal
lexical_ordering: Greater
$ echo $?
0

# comparing 2 "equal" versions with status code reporting enabled
$ sem-tool compare -e 2.2.2+abc 2.2.2
---
semantic_ordering: Equal
lexical_ordering: Greater
$ echo $?
112

$ sem-tool compare -es 2.2.2+abc 2.2.2
---
semantic_ordering: Equal
lexical_ordering: Greater
$ echo $?
0

sort

The sort command is somewhat complex, but offers 2 differet modes of input:

• CLI arguments
• reading from standard input

It is recommended that you read sem-tool sort --help, but here are some examples. If you're wondering why you may sometimes get different results than these, it's once again, helpful to read the --help.

sort with CLI arguments

# simple cli argument sorting
$ sem-tool sort 1.2.3 3.2.1 2.2.2
---
versions:
  1.2.3:
  - 1.2.3
  2.2.2:
  - 2.2.2
  3.2.1:
  - 3.2.1

# simple cli argument sorting, reverse ordering
$ sem-tool sort -r 1.2.3 3.2.1 2.2.2
---
versions:
  3.2.1:
  - 3.2.1
  2.2.2:
  - 2.2.2
  1.2.3:
  - 1.2.3

# filtering
$ sem-tool sort -f ">=2" -r 1.2.3 3.2.1 2.2.2
---
versions:
  3.2.1:
  - 3.2.1
  2.2.2:
  - 2.2.2

sort with standard input

# stdin argument sorting
$ cat example-data/short-good-versions.txt | sem-tool sort
---
versions:
  0.0.0-alpha.0:
  - 0.0.0-alpha.0+metadata
  0.0.1:
  - 0.0.1
  0.0.2:
  - 0.0.2
  0.2.0:
  - 0.2.0
  1.0.0-rc-2:
  - 1.0.0-rc-2+aaaaaa
  1.0.0-rc-2.0:
  - 1.0.0-rc-2.0+aaa.0
  - 1.0.0-rc-2.0+dddddd
  99.99.0-rc1.0:
  - 99.99.0-rc1.0

# reverse ordering
$ cat example-data/short-good-versions.txt | sem-tool sort -r
---
versions:
  99.99.0-rc1.0:
  - 99.99.0-rc1.0
  1.0.0-rc-2.0:
  - 1.0.0-rc-2.0+aaa.0
  - 1.0.0-rc-2.0+dddddd
  1.0.0-rc-2:
  - 1.0.0-rc-2+aaaaaa
  0.2.0:
  - 0.2.0
  0.0.2:
  - 0.0.2
  0.0.1:
  - 0.0.1
  0.0.0-alpha.0:
  - 0.0.0-alpha.0+metadata

# filtering (see --help regarding how this filter applies)
$ cat example-data/short-good-versions.txt | sem-tool sort -r -f '*'
---
versions:
  0.2.0:
  - 0.2.0
  0.0.2:
  - 0.0.2
  0.0.1:
  - 0.0.1

# flattening (not recommended)
$ cat example-data/short-good-versions.txt | sem-tool sort --flatten
---
versions:
- 0.0.0-alpha.0+metadata
- 0.0.1
- 0.0.2
- 0.2.0
- 1.0.0-rc-2+aaaaaa
- 1.0.0-rc-2.0+aaa.0
- 1.0.0-rc-2.0+dddddd
- 99.99.0-rc1.0

# flat list of latest matching a filter as a plain list
$ cat example-data/short-good-versions.txt | sem-tool  -o text sort --flatten -r -f "*" 
0.2.0
0.0.2
0.0.1

Todo

• Need status code responses options
• Possibly remove "text" output, or just make it really nice.
• Additional language filter implementations
• Generate random semantic version lists for helping build tests
• Github Actions + release-plz
• Commands that take stdin, should probably take file inputs too.
• Property testing
• CLI Testing (probably) with assert_cmd
  • compare
  • filter-test
  • all subcommands
  • make these far more robust
  • restructure or add a framework to make them more legible & composable
  • validate all output types