Alternative to SNAPSHOT for non release versions

[tmvlpl]

While marking non release version with SNAPSHOT is great for Java libs, there are other usecases where a generated "fixed develop prerelease version" is better suited.
What about an alternative mode to the SNAPSHOT suffix, that automatically appends a semantic version prerelease marker to the upcoming version? Something like 1.2.3-dev.4, where 4 is the number of commits since the last tag. The used prerelease marker should be configurable and special care must be taken in case the current/next version already is a prerelease (like a release candidate).
I'd be happy to give the implementation a shot and provide a PR.

[KJoyner]

I achieved this a bit different. It required me adding capability to excludeSnapshot (opposite of forceSnapshot). I was trying to achieve a version that looked like major.minor.patch.buildNum when buildNum was defined (which we defined when building on Jenkins). If there is interest in adding this capability, I can provide a PR.

With the excludeSnapshot option in place, I added the following to my build.gradle:

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Determine version.
//
// If property BUILD_NUMBER is set (expected to be set on a Jenkins build server),
// then the version number will be in the format major.minor.patch.buildNumber. The
// major.minor.patch is derived from a git tag.
//
// If BUILD_NUMBER is not set, then the version number will be in the the following format:
// major.minor.patch-SNAPSHOT. Again, major.minor.patch is derived from a git tag.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

String buildVersion(version, position, project) {
String bVersion = version
if (project.hasProperty("BUILD_NUMBER"))
bVersion = bVersion + "." + BUILD_NUMBER
return bVersion
}

scmVersion.ext.hasBuildNumber = hasProperty("BUILD_NUMBER")
scmVersion {
excludeSnapshot = ext.hasBuildNumber
forceSnapshot = !ext.hasBuildNumber

nextVersion {
suffix = "start"
separator = "-"
}
versionCreator { version, position -> buildVersion(version, position, project) }
}
version = scmVersion.version

[bgalek]

expect this feature in the next release ;)

[bgalek]

merged!

[tmvlpl]

That looks great! Thanks a lot, I'll check it out immediately.

[bgalek]

@tmvlpl try out latest version ;)