Manage plugin versions and related dependencies through custom alias rules

[DanySK]

I'm not sure whether to consider this a bug or a feature request (namely, I do not know if the current behavior is there by purpose, if it is an unintended/unspecified behaviour, or if it does not behave as expected)

Describe the bug

Adding custom alias rules may intertwine badly with plugins version management. Consider, e.g.:

plugin.io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt=1.9.1
version.io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt..detekt-formatting=1.9.1

Since these two versions must remain aligned, it would be useful to group them into a single versions.properties entry, e.g. by

io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt:*
                     ^^^^^^

This correctly produces a single version.detekt=1.9.1 entry. However, from this point on, the plugin can no longer get resolved.

To Reproduce

If necessary, I can produce a minimal project using the two plugins mentioned above. Let me know.

Expected behavior the plugin and its dependencies are pulled in with the version specified in the versions.properties file

[LouisCAD]

Nice find, this is definitely something to specify in the doc.

Plugins do not support version rules, but, there's already a solution for your use case:

version.io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt..detekt-formatting=plugin.io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt

I'm taking the note to improve this area.

[DanySK]

Thanks, however running refreshVersions after the substitution of version.io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt..detekt-formatting=1.9.1 with version.io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt..detekt-formatting=plugin.io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt

produces an invalid version.properties file with both:

version.io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt..detekt-formatting=1.9.1
##                                         # available=1.10.0-RC1

version.io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt..detekt-formatting=plugin.io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt

Is it a known behavior? How to solve or work it around?

[LouisCAD]

It might be a poorly handled case now that I think about it. I'll test it later and let you know, note taken.

[LouisCAD]

@DanySK This works:

Version key rule:

io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt:detekt(-*)
                     ^^^^^^

version.properties file:

plugin.io.gitlab.arturbosch.detekt=version.detekt

version.detekt=1.9.0
## # available=1.9.1
## # available=1.10.0-RC1

[DanySK]

Yes this looks like a reasonable workaround! Thanks!