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Semver check

Release-plz uses cargo-semver-checks to check for API breaking changes in libraries.

The check results are shown in the release Pull Request and in the output of the release-plz update command:

  • If the check is skipped, release-plz shows nothing. This happens when the package doesn't contain a library.
  • If the check is successful, release-plz shows "(✓ API compatible changes)".
  • If the check failed, release-plz shows "(⚠️ API breaking changes)", with a report of what went wrong.

Example:

pr

You can configure whether to run cargo-semver-checks or not in the configuration file.

FAQ​

What's an API breaking change?​

It is a change that makes the new version of your library incompatible with the previous one.

For example, renaming a public function of your library is an API breaking change, because the users of your library will have to update their code to use the new name.

Will cargo-semver-checks catch every semver violation?​

No, it won't — not yet! There are many ways to break semver, and cargo-semver-checks doesn't yet have lints for all of them. You still need to check for semver violations manually.

What happens when release-plz detects API breaking changes?​

When release-plz detects API breaking changes, it updates the version of the package with a "major semver Bump". For example, in the image above, you can see that release-plz updated the release_plz_core version from 0.4.21 to 0.5.0. In this way, the users of your library know that the new version contains API breaking changes, and cargo update will not update to it automatically.

You can learn more about semver in the semver website and in the cargo book