TagVer

A Rust implementation of the MinVer CLI - minimalistic versioning using Git tags.

This project ports the excellent MinVer CLI .NET tool to Rust and incorporates the gitoxide crate, providing a fast, dependency-free CLI tool and library for calculating version numbers from Git repository tags.

Features

• Tag-driven versioning: Uses Git tags as the single source of truth for versions
• Height calculation: Automatically calculates distance from tagged commits
• Cross-platform: Single binary that runs anywhere Rust compiles
• Zero dependencies: Statically linked binary with no runtime dependencies
• Environment variable support: Full compatibility with existing MinVer CLI workflows
• First-parent traversal: Correctly handles merge commits like the original
• Semantic versioning: Strict adherence to SemVer 2.0.0 specification

Requirements

• Rust 1.75 or newer (MSRV)

Installation

From crates.io (recommended)

cargo install tagver-cli

Pre-built binaries

Download platform-specific archives from GitHub Releases:

• tagver-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (Linux x86_64)
• tagver-macos-arm64.tar.gz (macOS Apple Silicon)
• tagver-windows-x86_64.zip (Windows x86_64)

From source

git clone https://github.com/scratchingmonkey/tagver
cd tagver
cargo install --path crates/cli

Usage

Basic usage

# Calculate version for current repository
tagver

# With custom tag prefix
tagver --tag-prefix v

# Ignore height (use exact tag version)
tagver --ignore-height

# Print all command-line options
tagver --help

Example

$ git tag 1.2.3

$ tagver
1.2.3

Environment variables

All options can also be set via environment variables:

• TAGVER_TAGPREFIX
• TAGVER_AUTOINCREMENT
• TAGVER_DEFAULTPRERELEASEIDENTIFIERS
• TAGVER_MINIMUMMAJORMINOR
• TAGVER_IGNOREHEIGHT
• TAGVER_BUILDMETADATA
• TAGVER_VERBOSITY

How it works

TagVer follows the same algorithm as the original MinVer:

1. Tag discovery: Find all Git tags that match the configured prefix
2. Version parsing: Parse tags as semantic versions (SemVer 2.0.0)
3. Commit traversal: Walk the commit graph from HEAD to find the nearest tagged ancestor
4. Height calculation: Count commits between current position and the base tag
5. Version synthesis:
   • If at exact tag: use version as-is
   • If not at tag: apply auto-increment, add pre-release identifiers, append height
   • Apply minimum major.minor constraint if configured
   • Append build metadata if provided

Version calculation examples

Comparison with original MinVer

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Adam Ralph for creating the original MinVer
• Gitoxide for the excellent pure-Rust Git implementation
• The Rust community for the amazing ecosystem of libraries