Get *next* tag, like git describe but “forwards”

Question

With git describe , I can get information about the latest tag on which my current commit is based, and how far away from it I am.

I'm looking for a way to, based on the same information, build a semantic version number for a beta-version of the next release. In other words, given a tree like

A -- B -- C -- D
|              |
v1.2.3         HEAD

Now, git describe can give me something like v1.2.3-4-D - but how do I get to something like v1.2.4-beta or v1.3.0-beta (depending on which segment I say I want to increment)? Is there some tool built into git to handle this, or do I have to start with git describe and then pass that to something else that can increment for me?

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The proposed duplicate question does not solve my problem, because it relies on git describe --contains , and that only works if the future tag already exists. I'm looking for a way to, given the previous tag, infer what the upcoming release version will be , by giving only the current repo state and which part (major/minor/patch) should be incremented.

Answer 1

The comments seem to indicate that this is not possible with plain git commands; therefore, I've resorted to use GitVersion which solves exactly the problem I want to solve (albeit using a small yml file on disk to store data about what version, rather than deriving it from git describe ).