Vscode-vsce: Should vsce deal with pre-release version identifiers?

[kdvolder]

Not sure this is a bug. Perhaps its more of a request for clarification (depending whether the behavior is deliberate or accidental)

Semver version numbers can look like this (examples from here: http://semver.org/):

 2.0.0-rc.2 2.0.0-rc.1 1.0.0-beta

There can be a 'pre-release-tag' appended after the 3rd number, seperated by a '-'. This is also the convention of version for node packages as far as I know. It seems like vsce publish refuses such versions however.

Error: Failed Request: Bad Request(400) - The version string '0.0.1-201612192249' doesn't conform to the requirements for a version. It must be one to four numbers in the range 0 to 2147483647, with each number seperated by a period. It must contain at least one non-zero number.

First... I thought its a bug. But then I thought, maybe this could be deliberate? (E.g to prevent publishing of 'pre-release' versions on marketplace? But then its a bit odd it would accept a fourth number as the error suggests)

Please clarify what the rules are for publishing versions to marketplace (and consider fixing/changing it if this behavior isn't deliberate)

[joaomoreno]

This needs to come from the Marketplace itself. @hamenon @modigrv

[hamenon]

This is by design today, we only allow numeric values and period in the version. I can add an item to the backlog to allow pre-release tags.

[nehashri]

This would be a good feature to have in Marketplace to publish pre-release versions of extensions.

[henryju]

Note that the Marketplace seems to allow 4 digits (at least for other kind of extensions): X.Y.Z.build while vsce don't.

[kejxu]

was going through semver documentation, found the following explanation:

Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, increment the:

1. MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes,
2. MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner, and
3. PATCH version when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes.

incrementing the third digit (PATCH digit) seems to indicate a stable update; it would be helpful to support pre-release version numbers to indicate unstable versions. Maybe this was by design since users can only find and install the most recent (and stable) version of extensions

[elektronikworkshop]

I just ran into the same problem while trying to distribute an alpha version for testers. I'm not feeling comfortable distributing alpha extension packages which look like legit releases.

[elektronikworkshop]

The latest version (1.74.0) seems to support this. Strange - I didn't see anything having addressed this in the latest commits...

[divyenduz]

While this is not implemented, should this be reflected here: https://code.visualstudio.com/api/references/extension-manifest#fields

The docs for the version field are incorrect, stating that it is SemVer compliant.

I ran into this with 1.75.0.

[laike9m]

+1 on this. The documentation specifically says:

SemVer compatible version.

But vsce does not support all SemVer compatible versions.

Also, the marketplace is not SemVer compatible either. Taking 0.0.0-dev20200624 as an example. It is s valid semantic version, however marketplace does not recognize it.

[tamj0rd2]

Is this something that's still being considered?

[rjmholt]

Just to pile on here -- I should have linked our issue when we hit this.

In particular, in https://github.com/PowerShell/vscode-powershell/issues/1880#issue-433375920 we discuss the fact that npm uses semver v2 whereas the marketplace uses semver v1 (see @andschwa's comment) the .NET/Windows version scheme, meaning extensions are forced to use the intersection of the two; the marketplace doesn't tolerate a prerelease tag, but npm doesn't tolerate a patch version.

[andschwa]

Actually, I checked the spec and since the marketplace doesn't support an alphnumeric tag after a hyphen, it does not use Semantic Versioning v1, which specifies:

A pre-release version number MAY be denoted by appending an arbitrary string immediately following the patch version and a dash. The string MUST be comprised of only alphanumerics plus dash [0-9A-Za-z-].

The marketplace seems to have its own versioning schema.

[asbjornu]

It seems pretty obvious to me that everything living in the Node.js ecosystem should support SemVer 2.0. I hope this will be addressed and fixed soon.