Smarter Component Updates via Block Versioning

[mmailaender]

As my current understanding, jsrepo's CLI checks for updates by comparing the user’s local block implementation with the server’s current version. If any differences exist, it shows a diff. However, this approach lacks context — especially when both the user and the server have made changes — making updates harder to reason about or safely apply.

Problem:

Without explicit version tracking:

• The CLI can’t tell which version the user originally installed.
• It can’t distinguish between user modifications and upstream updates.
• This leads to uncertainty and often manual conflict resolution when blocks are updated.

Proposed Solution: Block Versioning

Introduce versioning for each block at the time the user fetches it.

How it works:

1. When a user installs a block, it's tagged with a version identifier (e.g. Button@v1.2.0).

2. On update, the CLI compares three versions:

   • v1.2.0 – the version originally installed
   • altered-v1.2.0 – the modified version on the user’s machine
   • v1.3.0 – the latest version from the server

3. This enables a 3-way diff:

   • What the user changed (altered-v1.2.0 vs v1.2.0)
   • What the server changed (v1.3.0 vs v1.2.0)

4. With the help of an LLM, the CLI could:

   • Classify user vs server changes semantically

   • Determine mergeability, offering intelligent suggestions:

     • Apply update safely
     • Skip update
     • Merge with manual/assisted conflict resolution

Benefits:

• Greater clarity and safety in updating customized blocks
• Potential for automated conflict resolution
• Foundation for more powerful CLI UX (e.g. upgrade suggestions, visual changelogs

[ieedan]

Hey sorry for the delay in response I have been trying to give this some thought but I have been pretty busy.

A few concerns:

• This would require some sort of lock-file or addition to the jsrepo.json. I am not sure anyone will be too fond of yet another file in their project and I don't feel super great about appending what version was added in the jsrepo.json
• Currently jsrepo doesn't actually know what version it got when fetching from jsrepo.com. It just gets the content of whatever file. (There are of course ways to fix this)

I do think there is value to this definitely something to continue to think about.