Auto Versioning in Visual Studio 2017 (.NET Core)

Question

Add <Deterministic>False</Deterministic> inside a <PropertyGroup> section  of .csproj

The workaround to make AssemblyVersion * working is described in “Confusing error message for wildcard in [AssemblyVersion] on .Net Core #22660”

Wildcards are only allowed if the build is not deterministic, which is the default for .Net Core projects. Adding <Deterministic>False</Deterministic> to csproj fixes the issue.

The reasons why .Net Core Developers consider Deterministic Builds beneficial described in http://blog.paranoidcoding.com/2016/04/05/deterministic-builds-in-roslyn.html and Compilers should be deterministic: same inputs generate same outputs #372

However if you are using TeamCity, TFS or other CI/CD tool, it's probably better to keep the version number controlled and incremented by them and pass to build as a parameter (as it was suggested in other answers) , e.g.

msbuild /t:build /p:Version=YourVersionNumber /p:AssemblyVersion=YourVersionNumber

Package number for NuGet packages

msbuild /t:pack /p:Version=YourVersionNumber   

If you're using Visual Studio Team Services/TFS or some other CI build process to have versioning built-in, you can utilize msbuild's Condition attribute, for example:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <Version Condition=" '$(BUILD_BUILDNUMBER)' == '' ">0.0.1-local</Version>
    <Version Condition=" '$(BUILD_BUILDNUMBER)' != '' ">$(BUILD_BUILDNUMBER)</Version>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp1.1</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <Folder Include="wwwroot\" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore" Version="2.0.0" />
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore" Version="1.1.2" />
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Extensions.Caching.Memory" Version="1.1.2" />
  </ItemGroup>

</Project>

This will tell the .NET Core compiler to use whatever is in the BUILD_BUILDNUMBER environment variable if it's present, or fallback to 0.0.1-local if you're doing a build on your local machine.

I have been looking for a version incrementer for a .NET Core app in VS2017 using the csproj configuration format.

I found a project called dotnet bump that worked for the project.json format but struggled to find a solution for the .csproj format. The writer of dotnet bump actually came up with the solution for the .csproj format and it is called MSBump.

There is a project on GitHub for it at:

https://github.com/BalassaMarton/MSBump

where you can see the code and it's available on NuGet too. Just search for MSBump on Nuget.

You can use a MSBuild property function to set the version suffix based on current date:

<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == 'Debug' ">
  <VersionSuffix>pre$([System.DateTime]::UtcNow.ToString(yyyyMMdd-HHmm))</VersionSuffix>
</PropertyGroup>

This will output a package with a name like: PackageName.1.0.0-pre20180807-1711.nupkg.

More details about MSBuild property functions: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/msbuild/property-functions

The Version is formed from the combination of VersionPrefix and VersionSuffix, or if VersionSuffix is blank, VersionPrefix only.

<PropertyGroup>
  <VersionPrefix>1.0.0</VersionPrefix>
</PropertyGroup>