bump-dev-version.yml

Bump an R package’s DESCRIPTION dev-version counter (the 4th .90NN component, e.g. 0.1.0.9057 -> 0.1.0.9058) after every merge to main, and open – or auto-merge – a PR to carry it in. Pairs with version-check.yml, which now fails a PR that touches Version: itself: since the bot owns the bump, a PR doing so just guarantees a collision with the next PR that merges.

A version with exactly 3 components (a release just cut, e.g. 0.1.0) starts a new dev cycle at .9000, matching the lab manual’s 0.0.0.9000, 0.0.0.9001, … convention. Depends on nothing but base R’s package_version class – no install.packages() step needed.

Guards against re-triggering itself: the bump commit carries a [skip bump-dev-version] marker, and the job skips when the triggering push’s head commit carries it. This assumes the bump PR is merged via squash (the default auto-merge behavior), so the marker survives into the merge commit’s message.

Inputs

Input	Type	Default	Description
description-path	string	DESCRIPTION	Path to the DESCRIPTION file to bump.
base-branch	string	main	Base branch to open the bump PR against.
pr-branch	string	automated/bump-dev-version	Head branch for the automation PR.
auto-merge	boolean	true	Enable GitHub’s native auto-merge (squash) on the bump PR.
dry-run	boolean	false	Bump but skip opening/merging a PR. Not yet exercised by this repo’s own CI (its dev-version selftest job calls the bump-dev-version composite directly instead of this reusable workflow – see the bootstrapping-gap note in CLAUDE.md); meant for a consumer to smoke-test the bump logic.

Secrets

Secret	Required	Description
WORKFLOW_TOKEN	no	PAT or App token; needed only to push to a protected branch.

Outputs

Output	Description
old-version	The DESCRIPTION version before the bump.
new-version	The DESCRIPTION version after the bump.

Permissions

Grant contents: write and pull-requests: write, and enable Settings -> Actions -> General -> “Allow GitHub Actions to create and approve pull requests”. For auto-merge, also enable Settings -> General -> “Allow auto-merge”.

Example

# Copy to .github/workflows/bump-dev-version.yml in your repo.
name: Bump dev version

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  bump:
    permissions:
      contents: write
      pull-requests: write
    uses: Morrison-Lab/gha/.github/workflows/bump-dev-version.yml@v2
    with:
      # description-path: DESCRIPTION   # default
      # auto-merge: true                 # default; set false to review by hand
    secrets:
      WORKFLOW_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.WORKFLOW_TOKEN }}

See bump-dev-version.yml in examples/ for the full caller stub. (Linked to the directory rather than the file, because a blob/main/... link to a capability’s own example 404s on the pull request that introduces it – the file does not exist on main until that PR merges, and check-links rightly fails it. The sibling pages can use the direct form because their targets already landed.)

Pin @v2: this capability was added after @v1 was frozen, so it does not exist at that tag. See Versioning.