auto-increment-version.md

Auto-increment mod version

Keep forgetting to bump the version of your mod? Get the compiler to do it for you...

Note: If you do this, and use the debug trace style menioned in the 'Bonus' section at the end of this article, the log analyser will be able to link together much more information about your mod.

Step 1: Disable deterministic setting

While VS2017 is closed, edit the .csproj file of your mod and look for the following:

<Deterministic>true</Deterministic>

Change true to false and save the file.

Step 2: Add a version wildcard

Open the AssemblyInfo.cs file in your project and find the following line (usually near the end of the file):

[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.0.0")]

Add a wildcard to denote where the auto-incrementing part of the version number should start (recommend using the minor or build position):

// this will auto-increment the minor, build and revision parts of the version
[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.*")]

Step 3: Access the generated value in your mod

Here we set a static ver field that pulls the version number from the assembly. We're also pulling the mod name from the assembly too, and concatenating it with the ver field.

public class Mod : IUserMod
{

  // Name and version from assembly
  public static readonly string ver = $"{Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Version.Major}."
                                    + $"{Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Version.Minor}";
  public static readonly string name = $"{Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Name} {ver}";

  // Required by C:SL
  public string Name => name;
  public string Description => "bleh..."

  // ...
}

Bonus: Prefixing your log messages

You can now access the static ver or name fields from anywhere in your mod, for example in a foo.cs you could do something like this:

Debug.log($"[{Mod.name}] hello!");

The CSLM Log Analyser will automatically detect trace in that format and link it to your mod, making trawling log files much less painful.

If you want the full version string:

Debug.log($"[{Mod.name}] Build: {Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Version}");

I normally output that when the mod is enabled:

public class Mod : IUserMod
{
  // ...
   
  public void OnEnabled()
  {
    Debug.Log($"[{name}] Build {Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Version} Enabled.");

    // ...
  }
  
  public void OnDisabled()
  {
    Debug.Log($"[{name}] Disabled");
  }
}