mkver

Easy access to your version and build metadata from within Node.js

Why?

Simple, reliable, no-runtime-dependency access to version and build information from within node and Electron apps should be easy.

Even if you push git SHAs into your package.json, after minification, asarification and installation into who-knows-where platform-specific directory structures, you’ll still be fighting __dirname bugs trying to find where your package.json went.

In TypeScript and ES6 Module worlds, there’s a super simple, minification-compatible and asar-compatible solution to importing information from outside your current file, and it’s great.

It’s called import. Or for you old-skool kids, require.

If we can write build-specific information as constants as code, living in our codebase, consumption of this metadata becomes trivial. Add it to your build pipeline, import the thing, and then solve the Big Problems.

What?

mkver produces either:

• a Version.ts (the default, for TypeScript users),
• a version.mjs (for JavaScript module users), or
• a version.js (if you’re using CommonJS) with your git SHA and version information exported as constants.

Example output

// Version.ts

export const version = "1.2.3-beta.4"
export const versionMajor = 1
export const versionMinor = 2
export const versionPatch = 3
export const versionPrerelease = ["beta", 4]
export const release = "1.2.3-beta.4+20220101105815"
export const gitSha = "dc336bc8e1ea6b4e2f393f98233839b6c23cb812"
export const gitDate = new Date(1641063495000)
export default {
  version,
  versionMajor,
  versionMinor,
  versionPatch,
  versionPrerelease,
  release,
  gitSha,
  gitDate,
}

The filename can be anything you want, but the file extension must be .ts, .mjs, or .js.

For extra credit, it also creates a SemVer-compatible release tag that looks like ${version}+${YYYYMMDDhhmmss of gitDate}, and a gitDate, which is a Date instance of when that last git commit happened.

Installation

Step 1: add mkver to your package.json

npm i --save-dev mkver or yarn add -D mkver

Step 2: For TypeScript users

Add a pre... npm script to your package.json that runs mkver:

  "scripts": {
    ...
    "precompile": "mkver",
    "compile": "tsc",
    ...
  }

Step 2: For JavaScript module or CommonJS users

Add mkver as a pre... script for your test script and/or your webpack/gulp/grunt/browserify pipeline in your package.json:

  "scripts": {
    ...
    "prebuild": "mkver ./lib/version.mjs", // or ./lib/version.js
    "build": "webpack", // or whatever you use
    ...
  }

Step 3: Add to .gitignore

You should add your Version.ts, version.mjs, or version.js file to your project’s .gitignore.

How

mkver is a pretty simple, no-dependencies, three-step, one-trick pony:

1. mkver first looks for a package.json in ., then .., then ../.., etc, and extracts the version value.
2. mkver then execs git rev-parse HEAD to get the last commit SHA. Having git available to the calling shell is a prerequisite. Please don’t file a bug report for this.
3. Finally, mkver writes the contents to the first argument given to mkver, which can include a subdirectory. The default output is ./Version.ts. Existing files with that name will be overwritten. mkver uses the file extension to determine what format (TypeScript, module, or es6) to render the output.

If anything goes wrong, expect output on stderr, and a non-zero exit code.

Use with TypeScript or MJS modules

import { version, release } from "./Version"

Use with <= ES6 javascript

const { version, release } = require("./version") // < mind the case matches whatever you give mkver

Remember to mkver version.js in your npm script (see the Installation’s “Step 2” above!)

Bash access to your version info

Need access to your release from, say, your deploy script written in bash?

  release=$(node -e "console.log(require('./path/to/Version.js').release)")

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

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