Builds - Auto Versioning

Automatic versions and releases

.github/workflows/version-and-release.yml runs after a pull request is merged into develop or master. Closing a PR without merging it, or pushing directly to a branch, does not increment the version.

The version commit updates the shared VersionPrefix. Master releases have no prerelease suffix. Major and Minor remain manual decisions. When a branch has an older Revision than an existing release tag with the same Major/Minor, the next bump starts from the newer release version. Previous version commits also prevent a merge of stale version metadata from moving that branch backward.

On master, the workflow builds and tests the tagged commit, then publishes generated release notes and zero-v{Major}.{Minor}.{Revision}.{Build}-win-x64.zip. The ZIP contains the native zcc.exe and samples folder. A failed build/test leaves the version commit and tag in place but does not create the Release; rerun the failed workflow to retry. Reruns reuse the same PR’s version and tag, and an existing Release’s ZIP is replaced rather than creating another Release.

Competing merge runs use retrying fast-forward pushes; master’s tag and version commit are pushed atomically. Runs are not grouped with Actions concurrency, because its pending-run replacement can drop a merge event. Each version component is limited to 65534 for compatibility with .NET assembly versions.

Repository setup

1. Merge the workflow and its scripts into the default branch and retain them on both develop and master. The pull_request_target trigger uses trusted base-branch workflow code, and the job checks out the merged base branch.
2. Allow the workflow’s contents: write permission. The default GITHUB_TOKEN is sufficient when the target branch and version tags allow workflow pushes.
3. If branch/tag rules require a specific bypass identity, configure that identity and store its repository-write token as the optional VERSION_TOKEN Actions secret. Both checkout/push and Release creation use this token when supplied. A token alone does not bypass branch protection or required checks.

The native build is part of this workflow because pushes and Releases created with GITHUB_TOKEN do not trigger additional workflows automatically.

Run the automation tests locally with:

pwsh -NoProfile -File .github/scripts/test-version.ps1

These tests use disposable local repositories and never push to GitHub. The scripts require PowerShell 7.2 or later and Git. The workflow uses PowerShell for checkout, SDK installation, version updates, testing, and release packaging; it has no Node.js scripts or JavaScript-based action dependencies.