Is there a way to specify mimaPreviousArtifacts should include all versions in a range?

[jackkoenig]

For example, I can write something like:

  mimaPreviousArtifacts := {
    val versions = "1.0.0" :: "1.0.1" :: "1.0.2" :: Nil
    Set(versions.map("my.org" %% "proj" % _): _*)
  }

And I tried the following which weirdly worked locally for one project but not another and failed on Travis and CircleCI:

  mimaPreviousArtifacts := Set("my.org" %% "proj" % "1.0.*")

Is the a canonical way to do this or do I just need to include adding additional versions in my release process?

[jackkoenig]

Perhaps an "inductive" approach is to use + thus new changes will be tested against the prior version, eg.

mimaPreviousArtifacts := Set("my.org" %% "proj" % "1.0.+")

[SethTisue]

Within a compatible series, it should be adequate to check against any single previous release in that series. It isn’t obvious to me whether it’s “better” to use the oldest in the series or the newest, since it’s hard to see how it could matter.

[dwijnand]

Newest is better as, otherwise, you risk losing methods added in a.b.1.

Doing this makes the build non-reproducible, so I'm not in favour.

But you could implement this today by invoking Coursier in your build definition, get the versions available and then use those versions to specify mimaPreviousArtifacts (which will be resolved again, by Ivy this time - it doesn't use Coursier, yes).

[SethTisue]

Newest is better

Oh right, of course. (I’m too accustomed to Scala stdlib’s tighter constraints.)

[jackkoenig]

Doing this makes the build non-reproducible, so I'm not in favour.

Good point, and it will often mean that old commits no longer pass the MiMa check since they may not be binary compatible with newer versions.

I guess one tricky thing about having it find the prior versions is that you need to be sure you can determine that. We set the version as 1.0-SNAPSHOT in the intermediate versions (for example, between 1.0.1 and 1.0.2) so unless we are careful to keep all prior releases as ancestor commits, this wouldn't work either.

Perhaps the best approach is just updating mimaPreviousArtifacts as part of the release process.

[SethTisue]

Perhaps the best approach is just updating mimaPreviousArtifacts as part of the release process

(that's what I see most OSS projects doing)

[jackkoenig]

Thank you both for your help!

[SethTisue]

further discussion at #724