Support generic VERSION file to record version info

[SohamJ]

Dependencies

N/A

Feature Request

Overview

The request is to support a generic VERSION file where the plugin can read and update the semantic version information.

VERSION file is a text file that holds only the version info and sits in the root of the git repository. For example:

# VERSION
1.0.0

Requirement

Version is used in many places in a typical SDLC process - from local development (using Makefiles or build files like pom/build.gradle etc), to building and deploying the artifact/Docker image in CICD (Jenkinsfile).

Instead of maintaining the version info in each of these files, we maintain a VERSION file in the root of the project as the single source of truth. All other files read the version from it.

For instance, we currently use conventional-changelog/standard-version project to parse version from this file and update the version and generate the changelog. Unfortunately, this tool only supports npm natively, which was another justification to use a VERSION file to keep versioning consistent across all project types, including the ones that don't use a build tool (e.g repos that maintain configurations only and no source code). Consistency in versioning will help simplify and increase adoption/ROI for adopting good commit standards (especially across a big enterprise)

This plugin can parse the version info from this file and increment it with nextVersion step.

Proposed Solution

• Plugin can support a parameter such as nextVersion versionFile: 'VERSION' to read the update the version. It can be defaulted when no other build file is found in the repo
• Use nextVersion to grab the new version in Jenkins Pipeline to use across build/deploy processes and create the git tag

[philippart-s]

Here is more precision when git tag and / or configuration (as pom.xml for instance) exists.

The git tag is used, if no git tag the VERSION file is used, if no VERSION file the configuration file is used.