How to sort semantic versions in bash?

You can use Linux sort:

$ printf "1.0\n2.0\n2.12\n2.10\n1.2\n1.10" | sort -t "." -k1,1n -k2,2n -k3,3n
1.0
1.2
1.10
2.0
2.10
2.12

Source: https://gist.github.com/loisaidasam/b1e6879f3deb495c22cc#gistcomment-1613531

Well, we could trick sort -V by adding a dummy character at the end of the string for lines that do not contain a hyphen:

$ echo "$versions" | sed '/-/!{s/$/_/}' | sort -V | sed 's/_$//'
v1.4.0-alpha
v1.4.0-alpha1
v1.4.0-patch
v1.4.0-patch2
v1.4.0-patch9
v1.4.0-patch10
v1.4.0
v1.5.0-alpha
v1.5.0-alpha1
v1.5.0-alpha2
v1.5.0-patch
v1.5.0-patch1
v1.5.0

Underscore lexically sorts after hyphen. That's the trick.