Maintain tags for something like @latest-2

[jdschleicher]

Hi!

We have been using @latest in our CI server for quite some time. Every once in a while we get an install from latest that bites us.

We are looking to implement some functionality that captures the latest 3 wednesday releases and using the 3rd latest version to be our standard cli install version.

This may give us a some wiggle room in the event there is a bug introduced.

It would be nice if we didn't have to build this logic and we could do something like : npm install sf@latest-3

I'm not sure if this a helpful approach or not or if this tagging syntax doesn't make sense for salesforce cli.

In my initial googl'ing this is all I came across to make sense of what I was looking for: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40398488/how-does-npm-install-npmlatest-2-resolve-package-version

[mshanemc]

Every once in a while we get an install from latest that bites us

Aww, sorry! [and you have opened issues for those, right ??]

We have the same problem with some of our dependencies in CI 😄.

ex: our node version is almost always the default, but we can set an env when we need something in particular.
https://github.com/salesforcecli/github-workflows/blob/deba43938b2a907e476b897fcf90424f49b06da2/.github/workflows/unitTestsLinux.yml#L13

Maybe @latest could be in the env, but then in an emergency you change it to @2.40.7 etc. (you can use the RN for the list of "Wednesday" versions). And don't forget to put it back when you're satisfied.

The one downside to your idea (ex: -3) is that it would update every week.

The upside to parameterizing it is that you could also use nightly or latest-rc on a cron job to know if the upcoming latest will be a problem for your project. Then you can

1. report it so we fix it before it becomes latest
2. switch the env to a version you know works ok before the one that doesn't becomes latest

[jdschleicher]

@mshanemc are there any plans that would adjust the format of the release notes page?

There looks to be a expected pattern that we can capture to get stable release notes from here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/forcedotcom/cli/main/releasenotes/README.md

We could call this directly and parse the third latest stable version? Maybe use that as a cron job and set that as the version to be the parameter? Overkill?

@RupertBarrow we could definitely do that, trying to automate it for now but it wouldn't be too crazy of a lift to do manually

[mshanemc]

@mshanemc are there any plans that would adjust the format of the release notes page?

yes. I wouldn't consider that a stable API.

there's a "index" json file for each architecture (they should all have the same versions, but with different links, so any of them would do for you)
https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.sfdx_setup.meta/sfdx_setup/sfdx_setup_install_cli.htm#sfdx_setup_install_cli_olderversions

those are stable APIs (and what we use for sf update --interactive and sf update --available

you'd want the highest patch version of [how many versions you want to go back] (highest minor is a nightly, followed by rc, then stable, stable-1, etc)

[jdschleicher]

awesome thank you!

[mshanemc]

we've also recently started uploading release artifacts (tarballs, signed installers) to the github releases
ex: https://github.com/salesforcecli/cli/releases/tag/2.46.6

[jdschleicher]

thank you @mshanemc !