Assembly versioning doesn't seem to work like C#

[NinoFloris]

Currently working through getting 2.1 production builds up and seeing FSC giving errors like

FSC : warning FS2003: An System.Reflection.AssemblyInformationalVersionAttribute specified version '2.2.0-alpha.1', but this value is invalid and has been ignored

We supply this semantic version through MSBuild and expect it to be cleaned before it's put into the assembly attributes. Doesn't seem to happen here, C# projects have no troubles.

Our msbuild propertygroup helper

  <PropertyGroup>
  <!--
    Build full version from constituent parts
    This will be picked up by the SDK which will pull it apart again
    to form a valid file version, assembly version etc.
  -->
    <Version Condition=" '$(VersionSuffix)' != '' ">$(VersionPrefix)-$(VersionSuffix)</Version>
    <Version Condition=" '$(VersionBuildMetadata)' != '' ">$(VersionPrefix)+$(VersionBuildMetadata)</Version>
    <Version Condition=" '$(VersionSuffix)' != '' AND '$(VersionBuildMetadata)' != '' ">$(VersionPrefix)-$(VersionSuffix)+$(VersionBuildMetadata)</Version>
    <Version Condition=" '$(Version)' == '' ">$(VersionPrefix)</Version>
  </PropertyGroup>

Then we use it like this in a Directory.Build.props file

  <PropertyGroup>
    <VersionPrefix>2.2.0</VersionPrefix>
  </PropertyGroup>

Then in our docker container we invoke through
RUN dotnet publish -c Release --no-restore /p:VersionBuildMetadata="$ART_VERSION_META" /p:VersionSuffix="$ART_VERSION_LABEL" \ -o /output src/entrypointproject/entrypointproject.fsproj

Related: #4430

[matthid]

I think the difference is that the c# compiler doesn't warn on this particular attribute.

[NinoFloris]

So I opened up both a C# and an F# assembly in dotPeek.

Both projects have set an AssemblyInformationalVersion [assembly: AssemblyInformationalVersion("2.2.0-alpha.1")]
So contrary to what the message leads you to expect it's actually not ignored.

Also the FSC warning in that case is not in line with what C# warns about as it seems they allow both assembly version format and semver in the informational version without warning.

[KevinRansom]

Yes we validate AssemblyInformationalVersion, I have a bug to fix that.

[KevinRansom]

@NinoFloris fix is here: #5336