Merges to the release branch decreases the value of CommitsSinceVersionSource

[AndreasFetzer]

Hi,

we have observed a strange behaviour in our repository: The value of CommitsSinceVersionSource changes with every merge commit of our remote release branch to the local one.

Some background information:

• We have the following branches:
  • master (is basically the develop)
  • release-VERSION (release branch and stable)
  • occasionally feature branches
• Our workflow is the following:
  • Outside of a release phase we are working on the master
  • When entering a release we create a release branch, e.g. "release-1.0.0"
  • While working on a release the bugfixes are either committed directly on the release branch or merged from a separate branch
  • Sometimes this requires the developers to merge the release branch either into their local release branch or the bugfix branch

The behaviour that we now have is:

• Suddenly after such a merge of the release branch, the value for CommitsSinceVersionSource dropped from 118 to 49
• From the diagnostic output of GitVersion I can see:

INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:81] Begin: Calculating base versions
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:89] Fallback base version: 0.1.0 with commit count source 13da42ccb7d53763d079f9cc98f929b1f283971c
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:94] Found commit [a23128f [TICKET-61655] <bug fix>: Fix bindings] matching merge message format: Default
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:94] Found commit [a23128f [TICKET-61655] <bug fix>: Fix bindings] matching merge message format: Default
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:94] Found commit [a23128f [TICKET-61655] <bug fix>: Fix bindings] matching merge message format: Default
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:96] Found commit [a23128f [TICKET-61655] <bug fix>: Fix bindings] matching merge message format: Default
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:96] Found commit [a23128f [TICKET-61655] <bug fix>: Fix bindings] matching merge message format: Default
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:96] Merge message 'Merge branch 'release-1.3.0' of our-repo into release-1.3.0': 1.3.0 with commit count source 44973ff567c372b23b62c76a81f533de10b1d121
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:97] Merge message 'Merge branch 'release-1.3.0' of our-repo into release-1.3.0': 1.3.0 with commit count source 0fb47744c5dbc428bffd47a80e80f0582cd39819
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:97] Merge message 'Merge branch 'release-1.3.0' of our-repo into release-1.3.0': 1.3.0 with commit count source 8a3113e63a7235a98c0acc9164acdd548922b9dc
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:97] Merge message 'Merge branch 'release-1.3.0' of our-repo into release-1.3.0': 1.3.0 with commit count source bbd0598f86c6046dd4b3d417e47822d1b64a1eed
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:39:97] Merge message 'Merge branch 'release-1.3.0' of our-repo into release-1.3.0': 1.3.0 with commit count source 50ca6828a597945f24f4dd8306c5dd54cdbf528b
    ...
    ...
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:40:03] Begin: Finding branch source of 'release-1.3.0'
    ...
    ...
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:40:12] End: Finding branch source of 'release-1.3.0' (Took: 92.01ms)
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:40:12] Version in branch name: 1.3.0 with commit count source a23128ff788b944b3f7591be4af70859ba134313
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:40:23] Found multiple base versions which will produce the same SemVer (1.3.0), taking oldest source for commit counting (Merge message 'Merge branch 'release-1.3.0' of our-repo into release-1.3.0')
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:40:23] Base version used: Merge message 'Merge branch 'release-1.3.0' of our-repo into release-1.3.0': 1.3.0 with commit count source 50ca6828a597945f24f4dd8306c5dd54cdbf528b
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:40:23] End: Calculating base versions (Took: 422.22ms)
  INFO [09/28/22 15:02:40:23] 49 commits found between 50ca682 Merge branch 'release-1.3.0' of our-repo into release-1.3.0 and a23128f [TICKET-61655] <bug fix>: Fix bindings
  ...

So GitVersion is finding THE LAST 5 merge commits of the release branch and taking the oldest one as source for the commit counting.
Now if I reset the release branch to the commit before the latest merge commit, it will again find the last 5 merges (but now the oldest one is different) and the CommitsSinceVersionSource value will change again.

I searched quiet a while for an explanation but I was not able to find an answer. And I was also not able to reproduce this with a simple test repository. Even if I merged the remote release branch several times in my test repository, GitVersion takes a different source for commit counting:

INFO [09/28/22 15:14:37:17] Found multiple base versions which will produce the same SemVer (1.0.0), taking oldest source for commit counting (Version in branch name)

Can someone explain me this behaviour of GitVersion? Are we doing something wrong?

I would like to avoid this issue in future releases.

Thanks in advance and best regards,
Andreas

[asbjornu]

I think you may be hit by #3041. Please read it and the referenced issues and let me know if it explains the behavior you're seeing.