I recently updated my versioning on my build server to help separate CI builds from builds that are being publicly distributed. My versioning scheme for CI builds looks like 5.4.4-239CI37380 following SemVer 2.0 this gives me Major.Minor.Patch-PreRelease. My PreRelease is the “Go Counter” + “CI” + “Source Revision Number”.

Unfortunately, assembly versions use a different scheme, Major.Minor.Build.Revision and are only allowed to have numbers and no dashes (AssemblyVersionAttribute). So, I ended up keeping the CI version for file names, but changed the assembly to just use the Major.Minor.Patch for the assembly Major.Minor.Build (you with me?). Then for to help identify different assemblies I added the Go Counter to the end.

The lesson is to only use numbers in your .Net assembly version numbers.