GitVersion: bump semver on merge through dev → qa → uat → main

[carlosantiagorojas]

I’m using GitVersion v6.0.5 in Azure DevOps

Hello, I want to know if a configuration exist so that it can bump the semver in a pre-release branch. I have 4 branches, dev, qa uat and main.

And i want that each branch bump the semver version when a feature/bugifx/hotfix branch is merged and it carries the calculated semver when merging between this branches.

feature/… → dev
dev → qa
qa → uat
uat → main (production)

I’d like each merge to:

1. Read the +semver:X tag on the merge commit.
2. Bump the version accordingly (major|minor|patch).
3. Carry that bumped version forward through each of the 4 branches, with the branch name as a prerelease label—until main, which should drop the label.

What I Expect:

feature → dev

• Before: 1.2.6-dev
• After merging feature/* with +semver:minor:
  → 1.3.0-dev

dev → qa

• After merging dev into qa:
  → 1.3.0-qa

qa → uat
→ 1.3.0-uat

uat → main
→ 1.3.0 (no prerelease)

And if I merge a hotfix/bugfix into any of those branches with +semver:patch, it should bump only the patch portion:

e.g. merging a +semver:patch into qa at 1.3.0-qa → 1.3.1-qa

What I’ve Tried

• GitFlow/v1 workflow with mode: ContinuousDeployment on develop and mode: ContinuousDelivery on qa, uat, main.
• Setting up each branch as main-branch
• Explicit branches: entries for each branch with track-merge-message: true, custom bump-message regex, increment: Inherit|None|….
• Trunk-Based/preview1 workflow.
• Disabling shallow fetch in Azure Pipelines (fetchDepth: 0).

None of these have produced the desired bump on merge; dev stays at 1.2.6-dev, qa never bumps, etc.

Question

1. Is this even possible with a single GitVersion.yml?
2. If so, what branch-specific settings (modes, increment, labels, strategies) do I need to add to make GitVersion:

• detect +semver: on merges,
• bump on each promotion merge, and attach the correct prerelease label for each branch?

Any pointers to a working sample config or documentation section would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!