The %autorelease Macro

The contents of the Release field

Fedora’s Versioning Guidelines define the different elements of which a release field consists. They are as follows:

<pkgrel>%{?dist}[.<minorbump>]

Square brackets indicate an optional item.

The %autorelease macro accepts these parameters to allow packagers to specify the different portions of the release field:

  • -b <baserelease>: Allows specifying a custom base release number (the default is 1).

    For instance, this can be used to keep release numbers on older Fedora releases way lower than on newer ones for the same package version.

  • -n: Don’t render the dist tag, e.g. for use in macros, if the dist tag is added later.

Important

To date, the %autorelease parameters are ignored in the headers of automatically generated changelog entries.

Note

In the prototype version the macro was named %autorel. To make its purpose more obvious, it is %autorelease now.

One-off bumping release numbers

You can bump the release to a higher value in a commit by adding a magic comment like this to the commit log (one its own line):

[bump release: <number>]

This would ensure that the release number is at minimum the specified number (if it were higher anyway, it would not change anything).

One use case for this would be, if a sub-package is split out into its own component and its release number sequence should not be reset. E.g. if the last release number while it was still a sub-package was 4, add [bump release: 5] to the commit log to let the sequence continue seamlessly.

You don’t have to undo this later, when the version changes, the release will be reset to 1 (or the value specified by %autorelease -b …).

Examples

Example: The Simple Case

Summary:    test-autorelease
Name:       test-autorelease
Version:    1.0
Release:    %autorelease
License:    MIT

%description
An example package testing the %%autorelease macro. This package is for
testing the normal release cadence, bumping in the left-most, most significant
place of the release field.

Will generate the following NEVR:

test-autorelease-1.0-1.fc34.x86_64

Example: The Custom Base Release Case

Summary:    test-autorelease-baserelease
Name:       test-autorelease-baserelease
Version:    1.0
Release:    %autorelease -b 100
License:    MIT

%description
An example package for the %%autorelease macro.

This package demonstrates using a base release number which lets release numbers start at other
values than 1 (the default).

Will generate the following NEVR:

test-autorelease-baserelease-1.0-100.fc34.x86_64

Traditional versioning with part of the upstream version information in the release field

Additional parameters are available to support an older form of package versioning. This form is recommended for packages with complex versioning requirements when support for RHEL7 and other systems with old rpm versions is required. See Traditional Versioning in the Packaging Guidelines for details.

The release field is extended:

<pkgrel>[.<extraver>][.<snapinfo>]%{?dist}[.<minorbump>]

Square brackets indicate an optional item.

The %autorelease macro accepts these parameters to allow packagers to specify those added fields:

  • -p: Designates a pre-release, i.e. pkgrel will be prefixed with 0..

  • -e <extraver>: Allows specifying the extraver portion of the release.

  • -s <snapinfo>: Allows specifying the snapinfo portion of the release.

In the modern versioning, those fields are embedded in the package Version instead.

Example: The Pre-Release Case

Summary:    test-autorelease-prerelease
Name:       test-autorelease-prerelease
Version:    1.0
Release:    %autorelease -p -e pre1
License:    MIT

%description
An example package testing the %%autorelease macro. This package is for
testing a prerelease with an <extraver> part, when upstream uses unsortable
versions like "1.0pre1".

Will generate the following NEVR:

test-autorelease-prerelease-1.0-0.1.pre1.fc34.x86_64

Example: The Extraver Case

Summary:    test-autorelease-extraver
Name:       test-autorelease-extraver
Version:    1.0
Release:    %autorelease -e pre1
License:    MIT

%description
An example package testing the %%autorelease macro. This package is for
testing with an <extraver> part, when upstream uses unsortable versions like
"1.0pre1".

Will generate the following NEVR:

test-autorelease-extraver-1.0-1.pre1.fc34.x86_64

Example: The Snapshot Case

Summary:    test-autorelease-snapshot
Name:       test-autorelease-snapshot
Version:    1.0
Release:    %autorelease -s 20200317git1234abcd
License:    MIT

%description
An example package testing the %%autorelease macro. This package is for
testing with a <snapinfo> part, for a snapshot between versions from an
upstream repository.

Will generate the following NEVR:

test-autorelease-snapshot-1.0-1.20200317git1234abcd.fc34.x86_64

Example: The Snapshot and Extraver case

Summary:    test-autorelease-extraver-snapshot
Name:       test-autorelease-extraver-snapshot
Version:    1.0
Release:    %autorelease -e pre1 -s 20200317git1234abcd
License:    MIT

%description
An example package testing the %%autorelease macro. This package is for
testing with <extraver> and <snapinfo> parts, when upstream uses unsortable
versions like "1.0pre1" and we package a snapshot after it.

Will generate the following NEVR:

test-autorelease-extraver-snapshot-1.0-1.pre1.20200317git1234abcd.fc34.x86_64