Version and prerelease rules

How a version text is read

Written as	Kind	Resolves to	-u
1.2.3	exact pin	that version	rewrites it
6.*, *	wildcard	the highest match	leaves it
[1.0.0], [1.0,2.0)	range	the lowest match, as NuGet does	leaves it
nothing	floating	the latest at every run	leaves it

Versions and ranges are parsed with NuGet.Versioning, so what NuGet accepts, fsxpired accepts.

Outdated

An exact pin is outdated when a newer version exists that it may move to. Which versions count depends on the prerelease rule:

• A stable pin is compared against stable versions only. 1.0.0 is up to date when the only newer version is 1.1.0-beta.
• With -pre / --prerelease, a stable pin is compared against everything, and -u moves it to a prerelease when that is the newest.
• A prerelease pin is always compared against everything. 8.0.0-beta-001 is outdated once 8.0.0-beta-002 exists, and again once 8.0.0 exists, with no flag needed: the pin already opted in.

A range is never outdated. It is shown with what it resolves to today and the latest version that exists, so the gap is visible, and left alone.

Update

-u replaces the version text of each outdated exact pin with the version it may move to. Only that span changes: spacing, quoting, line endings and the byte order mark stay as written. Files reached through #load are rewritten too. The run without -u is the dry run.