GitVersion Tool: Rename verbosity values to match GitVersion values

[augustoproiete]

Follow-up from #3281

Background

The Verbosity argument of GitVersion changed in more recent releases and the existing values in Cake's enumeration no longer match the accepted values by GitVersion.

Proposal

Update/rename the values in the Cake enumeration to match the exact values values expected in newer versions of GitVersion. This would be a breaking change in the Cake's API and would be included in a future major version of Cake.

Cake	Rename to	GitVersion
None	➡️	Quiet
Error	➡️	Minimal
Warn	➡️	Normal
Info	➡️	Verbose
Debug	➡️	Diagnostic

Workaround

The current workaround is to use ArgumentCustomization to pass in custom values:

var result = GitVersion(new GitVersionSettings
{
    // ...
    ArgumentCustomization = args => args
        .Append("-verbosity")
        .Append("Quiet")
});

---

Related:

• Unable to set none flag for verbosity
• Setting default branching strategy fails with an unexpected error

[vijaya-lakshmi-venkatraman]

Hi,
I am new to CAKE and would like to know more about the proposed fix.
Is the change required only on GitVersionVerbosity.cs?

[augustoproiete]

Hi @vijaya-lakshmi-venkatraman! Welcome to the Cake project 👋🏻

Yes, the goal is to rename the enumeration values in GitVersionVerbosity and (if needed) update the summary XML comment on the enumeration values to reflect/describe the new name.

You'll also need to update the GitVersionRunner to use the new names and update the tests in GitVersionRunnerTests to also use the new names.

Let us know if we should assign this one to you.

[joshuacookdev]

@augustoproiete - Stupid question, as I'm not super familiar with the justification or source: why have a distinct GetVersionVerbosity when there is an app-level Verbosity already, and the GitVersionRunner is just transpiling?

I'm willing to tackle this as it's <5 minutes of work, but if merging the verbosity classes is better long-term then I'm willing to give that a look as well.

[joshuacookdev]

I went ahead and did the rename while I was playing with building Cake locally, and pushed it forward. Let me know if there is anything further I can assist with on the matter!

[augustoproiete]

why have a distinct GetVersionVerbosity when there is an app-level Verbosity already, and the GitVersionRunner is just transpiling?
if merging the verbosity classes is better long-term then I'm willing to give that a look as well.

Hey @joshuacookdev thanks for your interest in helping with this one!

For context, GitVersion is a separate open-source project that is not part of Cake (it's an external tool that can be executed from Cake), and what we're doing is just adding some "helper" methods to make it easy for Cake users to execute the GitVersion tool.

It's important to have a separation between GitVersionVerbosity and Verbosity because both GitVersion and Cake might modify its verbosity options at any point in the future as they are independent projects.

We want users of GitVersion to be able to leverage all the options that GitVersion offers without having to compromise on the options offered by Cake, and we want to reserve the right to modify Cake's verbosity options without worrying about it having side-effects to GitVersion (or other tools).

When you use GitVersion from Cake, you can explicitly set the verbosity level, e.g.:

GitVersion(new GitVersionSettings
{
    Verbosity = GitVersionVerbosity.Diagnostic,
});

That means GitVersionVerbosity should always reflect all the options that GitVersion understands.

The options of GitVersion for Verbosity now happen to match with the options that Cake uses for Verbosity but that was not the case before and we can't guarantee it will continue that way in the future.

If tomorrow they (GitVersion) add a new option, say, Information, all we have to do is to update GitVersionVerbosity and users can start leveraging this new option, without us having to change the Verbosity enumeration of Cake.

Likewise, if Cake adds a new option that GitVersion doesn't understand, the execution of the tool would fail.

Does that make sense?