[A83] Re: Version Numbers

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[A83] Re: Version Numbers


There's lots of plans.  Whichever one you follow is up to you.  Some people
use a scheme, other people just make stuff up.  Take Winamp, for example:

2.72
2.71
2.7
2.666
2.65
2.64
2.63
2.62
2.61
2.6
2.5d
2.5c
2.50
2.24
2.23
2.22
2.21
2.20
2.10

Version 2.50 was when Winamp went to freeware.  Wasn't that when Nullsoft
got bought by AOL?  Winamp is cool, I actually paid the $10 or whatever for
it back in the day.  It used to have statistics, showing how many songs you
played and the number of hours played.  And the box mentioned that it was
shareware, but that it would never nag or bug you.  That convinced me it was
cool and that I should register.

So back to version numbers, Winamp normally follows two digit numbers, plus
some odd stuff thrown in for fun.  I remember some games doing this.  For
example, the first commercial version of Duke Nukem 3D was version 1.3d.  I
think both that game and DOOM had version 1.666.

I used to use a scheme such as 1.00, 1.10, 1.20, etc., as evidenced by
Bin2Var.  While this works, and is a valid number, I like the method used by
many open source projects, such as the Linux kernel.  Something like 0.1.0
looks cleaner than 0.10, in my opinion.  The main thing is to be consistent.
Either call it 0.50, or 0.5.0, but don't write it both ways in different
places.  That just annoys and confuses people.

You can also use dates.  Dates are a good way of doing nightly releases
without doing an official release.  For example, today's release would be
20020123.  Mozilla is a good example of this.  For example, I downloaded the
latest Win32 version from mozillazine.org today.  It is version 0.9.7+, with
Gecko version 20020116, and is build ID 2002011604.

So, really, you can use whatever you want.  Just pick something that you
like, and stick with it.  Or don't, just have fun with it.  Many aspects of
programming give you a place to exercise your creativity, and version
numbers are one such place.

> Is there any kind of plan one should follow when tagging a program with
> a version number? (i.e. where does the 4.0 come in Windows NT)?
References: