Support version ranges in project.json

[davidfowl]

Today we only support minimum. There should be a way in the future to lock dependency ranges.

[davidfowl]

Initial work is done.

[davidfowl]

In the RC we'll look at implementing syntax similar to https://github.com/npm/node-semver#semver1----the-semantic-versioner-for-npm

[ghost]

@davidfowl, does this mean we will have support for tilde (~) and circumflex accent (^) etc. like npm in dnx world sometime in future? Is there an issue tracking it?

From npm docs - https://docs.npmjs.com/files/package.json#dependencies:

See semver(7) for more details about specifying version ranges.

• version Must match version exactly
• >version Must be greater than version
• >=version etc
• <version
• <=version
• ~version "Approximately equivalent to version" See semver(7)
• ^version "Compatible with version" See semver(7)
• 1.2.x 1.2.0, 1.2.1, etc., but not 1.3.0
• http://... See 'URLs as Dependencies' below
• * Matches any version
• "" (just an empty string) Same as *
• version1 - version2 Same as >=version1 <=version2.
• range1 || range2 Passes if either range1 or range2 are satisfied.
• git... See 'Git URLs as Dependencies' below
• user/repo See 'GitHub URLs' below
• tag A specific version tagged and published as tag See npm-tag(1)
• path/path/path See Local Paths below

For example, these are all valid:

{ "dependencies" :
  { "foo" : "1.0.0 - 2.9999.9999"
  , "bar" : ">=1.0.2 <2.1.2"
  , "baz" : ">1.0.2 <=2.3.4"
  , "boo" : "2.0.1"
  , "qux" : "<1.0.0 || >=2.3.1 <2.4.5 || >=2.5.2 <3.0.0"
  , "asd" : "http://asdf.com/asdf.tar.gz"
  , "til" : "~1.2"
  , "elf" : "~1.2.3"
  , "two" : "2.x"
  , "thr" : "3.3.x"
  , "lat" : "latest"
  , "dyl" : "file:../dyl"
  }
}

URLs as Dependencies

You may specify a tarball URL in place of a version range.

This tarball will be downloaded and installed locally to your package at install time.

Git URLs as Dependencies

Git urls can be of the form:

git://github.com/user/project.git#commit-ish
git+ssh://user@hostname:project.git#commit-ish
git+ssh://user@hostname/project.git#commit-ish
git+http://user@hostname/project/blah.git#commit-ish
git+https://user@hostname/project/blah.git#commit-ish

The commit-ish can be any tag, sha, or branch which can be supplied as an argument to git checkout. The default is master.

GitHub URLs

As of version 1.1.65, you can refer to GitHub urls as just "foo": "user/foo-project". Just as with git URLs, a commit-ish suffix can be included. For example:

{
  "name": "foo",
  "version": "0.0.0",
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "visionmedia/express",
    "mocha": "visionmedia/mocha#4727d357ea"
  }
}

Local Paths

As of version 2.0.0 you can provide a path to a local directory that contains a package. Local paths can be saved using npm install --save, using any of these forms:

../foo/bar
~/foo/bar
./foo/bar
/foo/bar

in which case they will be normalized to a relative path and added to your package.json. For example:

{
  "name": "baz",
  "dependencies": {
    "bar": "file:../foo/bar"
  }
}

This feature is helpful for local offline development and creating tests that require npm installing where you don't want to hit an external server, but should not be used when publishing packages to the public registry.

[davidfowl]

It's possible but no promises for v1. NuGet v3 supports putting * anywhere in the version and we'll adopt that logic in dnu so 1.*, 1.0.* will be possible at some point.

[ghost]

Thanks. The npm folks added every possible option in there. If NuGet and dnx go with the same approach, it may left some corner cases little buggy (hard to test all possibilities without community feedback), but over time reliability can be assured. While going about it the most defensive way as always (hesitate adding new stuff) only slows down such enhancement opportunities IMO.. and it will take ages to get there!

[ptrstpp950]

@davidfowl what happened with the * in RC. I am just trying to get latest version from feed with *

[davidfowl]

It does not work in the RC. When restore merges with nuget it'll be possible

[ptrstpp950]

@davidfowl could you explain something more?

[davidfowl]

DNX and DNU are being retired in favor of the dotnet CLI (github.com/dotnet/cli) and nuget. NuGet 3 supports the * syntax in more parts of the version than dnu currently does. We're working on merging the relevant features of DNU back into nuget.

[ptrstpp950]

@davidfowl do you have use cases in some place written down? Or maybe an open issue with details?

[davidfowl]

For what's exactly? The use of * in nuget?

[ptrstpp950]

Yes. plus issue to integrate it with DNX an DNU

[davidfowl]

Not sure there's anything specific about *, ask on the nuget repository. You can find other information here https://docs.nuget.org/Consume/ProjectJson-Format#project.json-usage.

DNU NuGet/Home#1588

DNX has nothing to do with NuGet but here is some information on that https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/254#issuecomment-158124295