[BUG] inc premajor, preminor, and prepatch do the wrong thing if the version is already a pre-release.

[wraithgar]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current Behavior

From the docs:

premajor in one call will bump the version up to the next major version and down to a prerelease of that major version. preminor, and prepatch work the same way.

If we do these steps in isolation (using the internal, "pre" that does the down to a prerelease) we get:

> semver.inc('2.0.0-pre', 'major')
'2.0.0'
> semver.inc('2.0.0', 'pre')
'2.0.0-0'

But if we do premajor

> semver.inc('2.0.0-pre', 'premajor')
'3.0.0-0'

Expected Behavior

premajor et al should "do what it says on the tin", and not jump an extra major/minor/patch.

Steps To Reproduce

No response

Environment

semver@7.6.3

[reggi]

real world use case: npm/template-oss#495

[ljharb]

presumably 2.0.0 + premajor would still jump to 3.0.0-0?

[wraithgar]

Yes, they all currently do the right thing if the version being incremented is not already a prerelease.

> semver.inc('2.0.0', 'major')
'3.0.0'
> semver.inc('3.0.0', 'pre')
'3.0.0-0'
> semver.inc('2.0.0', 'premajor')
'3.0.0-0'

[wraithgar]

> semver.inc('3.2.4-pre.1', 'premajor')
'4.0.0-0'

It seems we also drop the existing preid, unlike

> semver.inc('3.2.4-pre.1', 'prerelease')
'3.2.4-pre.2'

[reggi]

I also want to note that semver inc currently isn't always strict and does "just drop prerelease"

Incremented "premajor version" will always drop prerelease.

> semver.inc('7.0.0-pre.0', 'major')
'7.0.0'
> semver.inc('7.0.0-pre.0', 'minor')
'7.0.0'
> semver.inc('7.0.0-pre.0', 'patch')
'7.0.0'

Incremented "preminor version" will drop prerelease if minor change.

> semver.inc('6.1.0-pre.0', 'major')
'7.0.0'
> semver.inc('6.1.0-pre.0', 'minor')
'6.1.0'
> semver.inc('6.1.0-pre.0', 'patch')
'6.1.0'

Incremented "prepatch version" will drop prerelease if patch change.

> semver.inc('6.0.5-pre.0', 'major')
'7.0.0'
> semver.inc('6.0.5-pre.0', 'minor')
'6.1.0'
> semver.inc('6.0.5-pre.0', 'patch')
'6.0.5'

So there is prerelease context aware functionality already incorporated into the existing inc.

[wraithgar]

Draft PR at #752

[mbtools]

With the draft, premajor, preminor, prepatch do two things to the pre-release:

1. add a new pre-release 0, if it does not exist
2. increases the pre-release id, if it exists

That's confusing.

I see these use cases:
a) Starting a new release with pre-release 0 (premajor, preminor, prepatch)
b) Increasing pre-releases, usually several times (prerelease)
c) Removing the pre-release (release, new)

Using premajor, preminor, prepatch with an existing pre-release should be an error. They work correctly otherwise.

[reggi]

@mbtools I don't think it's feasible to throw, you need the conditional logic, you missed the case where your version is a preminor and you want to go to premajor, it shouldn't throw, it should bump if it's premior or prepatch and if it's premajor it will increment the pre.0 number.

[wraithgar]

That's confusing.

I would submit that this is a product of design, and unavoidable. Prerelease is not very intuitive and a lot of folks stumble here.

The use case here is one of automation. Consider a situation where you know you have a major/minor/patch change to be made, and you also are either in pre-release mode or you aren't. You should be able to tell semver to bump your version with just those two pieces of information. Otherwise it's a LOT more tooling and work to infer what you should do.

If I have a piece of software that's on 10.1.0-pre.0, and I have two new changes:

• patch and breaking, I should expect to use premajor to now bump to 11.0.0-pre.0.
• feat and patch, I should expect to use preminor to bump to 10.1.0-pre.1 since I'm already in preminor mode, but I need a new version.

Consider the original purpose "bump to next release type and drop into pre-release mode". If you're already in the prerelease mode for that type that's effectively just a new pre-release for that same version.

ETA:

10.0.0-pre.0 bumped to the next major is 10.0.0 and then dropped to pre-release would be 10.0.0-pre.0 again, but that's not what you actually want. You are still asking for the "next" premajor". You really do want 10.0.0-pre.1