versions-le 0.1.4

Find where one dependency is constrained differently across a repository's manifests
versions-le-0.1.4 is not a library.

Useful? A star is how other developers find it — ★ GitHub · letools.dev/tools/versions-le

The build broke because api asks for regex = "1" and web asks for regex = "2", and no one version satisfies both. Or it did not break, and will: CI has run on 1.80 since March while rust-version says 1.88.

versions-le .

error cargo: regex ("1" (api/Cargo.toml) and "2" (web/Cargo.toml) cannot both be satisfied by one version) [api/Cargo.toml, web/Cargo.toml]
warning cargo: serde (constrained 2 different ways across 2 files: 1, 1.0.200) [api/Cargo.toml, web/Cargo.toml]
warning ci: rust (CI builds on 1.80.0, below the declared minimum 1.88.0 in api/Cargo.toml) [.github/workflows/ci.yml, api/Cargo.toml]
info ci: node (an unpinned tool version installs whatever is newest that day) [.github/workflows/ci.yml]
info npm: left-pad (a dist tag resolves to whatever is newest at install time) [package.json]
refused cross_ecosystem regex: appears in cargo and npm; different ecosystems name different things, so these were not compared [api/Cargo.toml, package.json]
refused unknown_grammar left-pad: a dist tag is a moving target, not a version range; excluded from comparison [package.json]
refused unknown_grammar node: a channel name is a moving target, not a version; excluded from comparison [.github/workflows/ci.yml]
refused unknown_grammar shared: an inherited workspace dependency carries its version elsewhere; excluded from comparison [web/Cargo.toml]
5 findings across 4 manifests — 1 error, 2 warning, 2 info

Exit code 1. The build stops before the deploy does.

The exit code is the product

  • 0 — nothing above info. Also 0 when there are no manifests at all: nothing can be in conflict with nothing.
  • 1 — findings.
  • 2 — the question was malformed, or --strict and part of the tree went unanalysed.

What it will not do

It never guesses. A constraint in a grammar it does not model is named in the report's refusals and takes part in no comparison:

refused unknown_grammar pkg: PEP 440 compatible-release (~=); excluded from comparison
refused cross_ecosystem semver: appears in cargo and npm; different ecosystems name different things, so these were not compared
refused ambiguous_version_string node: not evidently a version; excluded from comparison
refused per_job_tool_version python: installed as 3.12 and 3.9 by different jobs; a CI tool version belongs to the job that installs it, so these were not compared

The third is node-version: ${{ matrix.node }}. A <tool>-version: key in a workflow is a naming convention, not a schema, so a value that is not evidently a version is refused rather than read.

The fourth is the one that matters most for a repository that has done nothing wrong. Testing on the oldest interpreter a project supports and publishing on the newest is correct, and two jobs are not two claims about one requirement. An action uses: pin is a repository-wide choice and is still compared; only the per-job tool version steps out.

Comparison never crosses an ecosystem. An npm semver and a Cargo semver are unrelated packages that share a word — and a bare "1.0.200" means exactly 1.0.200 in npm and anything below 2.0.0 in Cargo. One bridge exists, msrv-mismatch, and it is built by naming both keys rather than by matching a name.

It never writes. No --fix, no --pin. The right version for a drifted dependency is a decision, not a derivation. It also never resolves a dependency graph, reads a lockfile, or touches the network: the question is whether the stated constraints agree, not what a resolver would pick.

Different, and unsatisfiable, are two findings

constraint-conflict is a smell: one dependency, more than one requirement. disjoint-constraint is a build that cannot resolve: two requirements no single version satisfies. The second is an error and the first is a warning, and they are never conflated.

Disjointness is decided by interval arithmetic over the modelled ranges, not by string comparison — which is also why >=20 and >=20.0.0 are not reported as a conflict. They are one requirement typed twice.

Checks

Code Severity What it means
disjoint-constraint error Two constraints no single version satisfies
malformed-constraint error Shaped like a constraint of its ecosystem, and broken
constraint-conflict warning One dependency, two or more different requirements
msrv-mismatch warning rust-version differs, or CI builds below it
prerelease-in-production warning An -rc or -alpha outside dev dependencies
floating-pin info latest, *, a caret on 0.x, an unpinned CI tool

What it reads

Manifest Keys
package.json the four dependency sections, engines, packageManager
Cargo.toml dependencies, dev, build, workspace and target variants, rust-version
pyproject.toml PEP 621 dependencies, optional-dependencies, requires-python
go.mod require, the go directive
.github/workflows/*.yml uses: action pins, <tool>-version: inputs, toolchain:

That last row is why this exists as much as the first: a CI toolchain drifting away from the floor a manifest declares is exactly the failure nobody notices until a release.

node_modules, vendor and .git are never walked. .github always is — a workflow lives in a hidden directory by definition, so --hidden controls the other hidden directories.

Install

Route Command Worth knowing
crates.io cargo install versions-le Any platform, needs Rust 1.88+.
From source cd versions-le/crate && cargo install --path . cargo build --release is the same build CI runs.

No runtime, no network, nothing written.

Options

--ecosystem <name>   only npm, cargo, python, go or ci; repeatable
--fail-on <what>     conflict (default) or any
--strict             a refusal or an unreadable manifest exits 2
--exclude <glob>     skip manifests matching this pattern; repeatable
--hidden             descend hidden directories too
--no-ignore          walk files that .gitignore excludes

--exclude takes ripgrep's glob syntax, from the same crate as the walk: a pattern with no / matches the basename anywhere, one with a / matches the root-relative path, * and ? stop at a separator and ** crosses one. A pattern that will not compile excludes nothing rather than everything, and the patterns beside it still work.

--fail-on any includes the info findings, for a repository that has decided it wants no floating pins at all. --strict is for a pipeline that wants no unanalysed corners: it turns unknown_grammar and ambiguous_version_string into exit 2. cross_ecosystem never trips it — that refusal is not a failure to answer, it is the answer.

stdout is protocol, stderr is human, and there is no --json flag. One mode, nothing to misremember. The report carries schema: 1 and no timestamp, so two runs over an unchanged tree are byte-identical and the report can be diffed against a baseline.

As an MCP server

versions-le mcp

Two tools, both returning { ok, data, diagnostics, meta }:

  • compare_versions — manifest contents in, findings out. Touches no filesystem.
  • versions_le_check — a directory in, the discovery and the same report the CLI writes.

ok reports whether the check ran, never whether the answer was yes.

Documentation

What Where
What this tool is allowed to say — scope, output contract, refusals, non-goals SPEC.md
How the code is written and held together — architecture, invariants, the gates AGENTS.md
What changed CHANGELOG.md
The tool's page, and the other fifteen letools.dev/tools/versions-le

More from the LE family

Sixteen single-purpose tools for the work in front of every model. Each ships a Rust CLI and an MCP server. One page: letools.dev

Get it out

  • String-LE — Extract every string in a codebase, so a person can read them
  • Numbers-LE — Extract every hardcoded number in a codebase, so a person can check them
  • Units-LE — Extract every quantity with its unit, normalized, and refuse the ambiguous ones by name
  • Dates-LE — Extract every date and timestamp, and the exact instant each one resolves to
  • IDs-LE — Extract every UUID, ULID, NanoID, ObjectId and Snowflake, and decode the time inside
  • IPs-LE — Extract every IP address, CIDR block and MAC, normalized and classified by scope
  • URLs-LE — Extract every URL in a codebase, with its protocol and exact position
  • Paths-LE — Extract every file path in a codebase, and say whether it still points at anything
  • Colors-LE — Extract every color in a codebase, and say which ones are not in your palette

Check it

  • Regex-LE — Find every regex in a codebase, and report which can be driven into catastrophic backtracking
  • Versions-LE — Find where one dependency is constrained differently across a repository's manifests
  • i18n-LE — Identify the i18n library a project uses, then audit its catalogs by that library's rules
  • Scrape-LE — Check whether a page is scrapeable before the scraper is written, and say when it cannot tell

Guard it

  • Secrets-LE — Find hardcoded credentials in a codebase, and never print one into the report
  • EnvSync-LE — Compare the dotenv files in a tree, and say which keys are missing from which
  • Unicode-LE — Find the Unicode that hides meaning — bidi controls, invisibles, homoglyphs, mixed scripts

Each stands on its own: no shared crate, no published core. Where two of them agree, it is because the same answer was right twice.

Contact — nolindnaidoo.com · GitHub · LinkedIn

Also by nolindnaidoo

Rust — pixelcoords and pixelactions are one loop: pixelcoords answers where, pixelactions acts there. Their own tools, their own voice — not part of the LE family.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.