Best Practice Software Versioning

Question

Is there any guideline or standard best practice how to version a software you develop in your spare time for fun  but nevertheless will be used by some people  I think it s necessary to version such software so that you know about with version one is talking about  e g  for bug fixing  support  and so on    But where do I start the versioning  0 0 0  or 0 0  And then how to I increment the numbers  major release minor change  and shouldn t any commit to a version control system be another version  or is this only for versions which are used in a productive manner

User · Answer

Yet another example for the A B C approach is the Eclipse Bundle Versioning  Eclipse bundles rather have a fourth segment   In Eclipse  version numbers are composed of four  4  segments  3 integers and a string respectively named major minor service qualifier  Each segment captures a different intent   the major segment indicates breakage in the API the minor segment indicates  quot externally visible quot  changes the service segment indicates bug fixes and the change of development stream the qualifier segment indicates a particular build

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You know you can always check to see what others are doing  Open source software tend to allow access to their repositories  For example you could point your SVN browser to http   svn doctrine-project org and take a look at the versioning system used by a real project    Version numbers  tags  it s all there

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You should start with version 1  unless you know that the first version you  release  is incomplete in some way   As to how you increment the versions  that s up to you  but use the major  minor  build numbering as a guide   It s not necessary to have every version you commit to source control as another version - you ll soon have a very large version number indeed  You only need to increment the version number  in some way  when you release a new version to the outside world   So If you make a major change move from version 1 0 0 0 to version 2 0 0 0  you changed from WinForms to WPF for example   If you make a smaller change move from 1 0 0 0 to 1 1 0 0  you added support for png files   If you make a minor change then go from 1 0 0 0 to 1 0 1 0  you fixed some bugs    If you really want to get detailed use the final number as the build number which would increment for every checkin commit  but I think that s going too far

User · Answer

I start versioning at the lowest  non hotfix  segement  I do not limit this segment to 10  Unless you are tracking builds then you just need to decide when you want to apply an increment  If you have a QA phase then that might be where you apply an increment to the lowest segment and then the next segement up when it passes QA and is released  Leave the topmost segment for Major behavior UI changes   If you are like me you will make it a hybrid of the methods so as to match the pace of your software s progression   I think the most accepted pattern a b c  or a b c d especially if you have QA Compliance in the mix  I have had so much flack around date being a regular part of versions that I gave it up for mainstream    I do not track builds so I like to use the a b c pattern unless a hotfix is involved  When I have to apply a hotfix then I apply parameter d as a date with time  I adopted the time parameter as d because there is always the potential of several in a day when things really blow up in production  I only apply the d segment  YYYYMMDDHHNN  when I m diverging for a production fix   I personally wouldn t be opposed to a software scheme of va b revc where c is YYYYMMDDHHMM or YYYYMMDD   All that said  If you can just snag a tool to configure and run with it will keep you from the  headache having to marshall the opinion facet of versioning and you can just say  use the tool     because everyone in the development process is typically so compliant

User · Answer

We use a b c d where   a - major  incremented on delivery to client  b - minor  incremented on delivery to client  c - revision  incremented on internal releases  d - build  incremented by cruise control

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There is also the date versioning scheme  eg  YYYY MM   YY MM   YYYYMMDD  It is quite informative because a first look gives an impression about the release date  But i prefer the x y z scheme  because i always want to know a product s exact point in its life cycle  Major minor release

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As Mahesh says  I would use x y z kind of versioning  x - major release y - minor release z - build number  you may want to add a datetime  maybe instead of z   You increment the minor release when you have another release  The major release will probably stay 0 or 1  you change that when you really make major changes  often when your software is at a point where its not backwards compatible with previous releases  or you changed your entire framework

User · Answer

I basically follow this pattern    start from 0 1 0 when it s ready I branch the code in the source repo  tag 0 1 0 and create the 0 1 0 branch  the head trunk becomes 0 2 0-snapshot or something similar I add new features only to the trunk  but backport fixes to the branch and in time I release from it 0 1 1  0 1 2      I declare version 1 0 0 when the product is considered feature complete and doesn t have major shortcomings from then on - everyone can decide when to increment the major version

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I use this rule for my applications   x y z  Where    x   main version number  1-   y   feature number  0-9  Increase this number if  the change contains new features with or without bug fixes   z   hotfix number  0-   Increase this number if the change only contains bug fixes    Example    For new application  the version number starts with 1 0 0   If the new version contains only bug fixes  increase the hotfix number so the version number will be 1 0 1  If the new version contains new features with or without bug fixes  increase the feature number and reset the hotfix number to zero so the version number will be 1 1 0  If the feature number reaches 9  increase the main version number and reset the feature and hotfix number to zero  2 0 0 etc

User · Answer

We follow a b c approach like   increament  a  if there is some major changes happened in application  Like we upgrade  NET 1 1 application to  NET 3 5   increament  b  if there is some minor changes like any new CR or Enhancement is implemented    increament  c  if there is some defects fixes in the code

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I would use x y z kind of versioning  x - major release y - minor release z - build number

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The basic answer is  It depends    What is your objective in versioning  Many people use version revision build and only advertise version revision to the world as that s a release version rather than a dev version  If you use the check-in  version  then you ll quickly find that your version numbers become large   If you are planning your project then I d increment revision for releases with minor changes and increment version for releases with major changes  bug fixes or functionality features  If you are offering beta or nightly build type releases then extend the versioning to include the build and increment that with every release   Still  at the end of the day  it s up to you and it has to make sense to you

[versioning] Best Practice: Software Versioning

Examples related to versioning