(This is difficult to search for, as when you look for “Windows Product Version”, you get a lot of results pertaining to the OS and not of a file)
I am building stuff in VS2022, and want to control the version numbers. After I generate something (in this case a dll), I can right-click on it (in Win10 in this case), select properties, I see the following:
I understand where the “File version” comes from in my VS2022 project. But where does the “Product version” come from?
3
In poking around, I discovered that by manually setting the “PackageVersion” in the project’s properties, I could set what was reported in the “Product Version” in Windows explorer.
The default version of the PackageVersion is:
But this confused me as I had not set “VersionPrefix” in my project. When searching online for that symbol, I encountered this question1:
Setting the version number for .NET Core projects – CSPROJ – not JSON projects
In which the accepted answer states:
If Version is unset, use VersionPrefix (defaults to 1.0.0 if unset)
and – if present – append VersionSuffix.
And in circling back to my project where I manually set the PackageVersion to be “1.2.0”, I discovered that VS had inserted this into the csproj file:
<PropertyGroup>
...
<Version>1.2.0</Version>
...
</PropertyGroup>
So mystery solved, but Microsoft’s naming policies didn’t help.
1. IMHO my question is almost, but not a dupe of that other question.