Hi,
in addition to Pascal's great summary, you can also have a look at the Semantic Versioning web site:
Cheers
Kambiz
----- On 27 Nov, 2020, at 15:47, Pascal Bourguignon pjb@informatimago.com wrote:
Hi!
Le 27/11/2020 à 13:51, Marco Antoniotti a écrit :
Hi
Sorry for the general noise, not necessarily related to the issue at hand.
I know I am a P.I.T.A., but I kind of concluded that versions of the kind
YYYYMMDD
Are better than
major.minor.small.itsy.bitsy.bit
What do you think?
Well, using a timestamp as version number is not as informative for the user as the semantic major.minor.bug version number.
The usual meaning being that:
- the major is incremented when incompatible changes to the API are
made: users updating from one major to another should expect to have to invest some work to upgrade their stuff for the new version.
- the minor is incremented when compatible changes to the API are made
(additions to the API, or change, with a compatibility layer provided): users updating from one minor to another can expect to only have to recompile their stuff for the new version, if at all, and no more work.
- the bug is incremented when bug corrections are made, without any
change to the API: user updating from one bug to another can expect total compatibility and no work at all on their part.
Instead of that, if you use a timestamp as version number, you now have to keep metadata, such as what versions are LTS (long term support), or other such attributes. This works for whole distributions, but not for single libraries.
-- __Pascal Bourguignon__