Tagging

Tags are used in Polylith to mark points in time where we consider the whole codebase (workspace) to be in a valid state, for example that everything compiles and that all the tests and the check command executes without errors. This is then used by the test command to run the tests incrementally, by only executing the affected tests, which substantially speeds up the tests.
The way we mark a stable point in time is to tag it with git (-f tells git to reuse the tag if already exists):
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git tag -f stable-lisa
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If we now run git log --pretty=oneline again:
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e7ebe683a775ec28b7c2b5d77e01e79d48149d13 (HEAD -> main, tag: stable-lisa) Created the user and cli bricks.
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c91fdad4a34927d9aacfe4b04ea2f304f3303282 Workspace created.
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...we can see that the second commit has been tagged with stable-lisa. Note that your hash tags will be different and when we refer to e.g. c91fdad in the following examples, you should instead give your own corresponding hash code.
If we execute the info command:
...the stable since hash has been updated and is now tagged with stable-lisa. All the * signs are gone because no component, base or project has yet changed since the second commit (which can be verified by running poly diff again).
We added the tag stable-lisa but we could have named the tag with anything that starts with stable-. We choose stable-lisa because Lisa is our name (let's pretend that at least!). The idea is that every developer could use their own unique tag name that doesn't conflict with other developers.
The CI build should also use its own pattern, like stable- plus branch name or build number, to mark successful builds. It may be enough to only use the stable points that the CI server creates. That is at least a good way to start out and only add custom tags per developer when needed.
The pattern is configured in workspace.edn and can be changed if we prefer something else:
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 :tag-patterns {:stable "stable-*"
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                :release "v[0-9]*"}
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An alternative to tag patterns is to give a git SHA, where the first few letters is enough as long as they are unique (but let's not do that now):
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git tag -f stable-lisa c91fdad
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The way the tool finds the latest tag is to execute this command internally:
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git log --pretty=format:'%H %d'
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Then it uses the first line of the output that matches the regular expression (e.g. stable-*) or if no match was found, the first commit in the repository.
Earlier when we changed a project by editing its deps.edn file, it got a trailing * to indicate that it was changed. But what happens if only some of its bricks have changed? Let's try that by adding a comment to the user.core namespace:
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(ns se.example.user.core)
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​
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; hi
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(defn hello [name]
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  (str "Hello " name "!"))
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...and execute the info command again:
Now the two projects are marked with a + which indicates that the projects themselves are unchanged but that at least one of their bricks has changed.
Release
When we release, we probably want the CI server to tag the release. Here we tag the first commit as v1.1.0 and the second as v1.2.0 (make sure you replace c91fdad with your corresponding sha):
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git tag v1.1.0 c91fdad
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git tag v1.2.0
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If we execute:
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poly info since:release
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...it picks the latest release tag that follows the pattern defined in workspace.edn:
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 :tag-patterns {...
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                :release "v[0-9]*"}
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If we execute:
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poly info since:previous-release
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...it picks the second latest release tag.
By executing git log --pretty=oneline we can verify that the tags are correctly set:
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e7ebe683a775ec28b7c2b5d77e01e79d48149d13 (HEAD -> main, tag: v1.2.0, tag: stable-lisa) Created the user and cli bricks.
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c91fdad4a34927d9aacfe4b04ea2f304f3303282 (tag: v1.1.0) Workspace created.
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The since parameter is used by the CI server to run all tests since the previous release, e.g.:
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poly test since:previous-release
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Depending on whether we tag before or after the build, we will choose release or previous-release. If since is not given, stable will be used by default.
Some other variants, like since:e7ebe68, since:head, or since:head~1 are also valid.

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