chapter-11.1-semver.md

11.1. Semantic Versioning system

Ref: https://semver.org/

• Semantic Versioning system uses major, minor, and patch release labels to track the current release of the software.

Eg: Django version 3.2.10

• The major release is 3
• The minor release is 2
• The patch release is 10

Sometimes, additional labels for pre-releases are also tracked using dev, alpha, beta, release candidates or rc, and build_id.

Some examples of pre-release versions are as follows:

• 3.2.10-a1
• 3.2.10-alpha.1
• 3.2.10-beta
• 3.2.10-rc.1
• 3.2.10-rc.1+41A39F2, etc.

Major Release

• This release introduce new features
• It is going to break your existing code with previous versions
• With every major release, the first release number is going to be increased by 1 and other release numbers would be 0
  • 1.2.10 -> 2.0.0

Minor Release

• They introduce some new features, but not with heavy changes.
• The code might break in this case also, but can be fixed with small refactorings. (Backward Compatible)
• In this release, features just gets depreciated, but do not get removed.
• With this release second release number is going to be increased by 1 and the last would be 0
• 11.2.10 -> 11.3.0

Patch Release / Bugfix Release

• This release is not going to introduce any new features
• The older code is not going to break in this release
• Every changes is going to be internal changes or logical changes.
• With this release the last release number is going to be increased by 1
• 11.2.10 -> 11.2.11

The tree below shows an example of the release cycle of a software.

v0.1.0
v0.2.0
...
v0.9.0
v0.10.0
...
v1.0.0-a1
v1.0.0-a2
...
v1.0.0-b1
v1.0.0-b2
...
v1.0.0-rc.1
v1.0.0-rc.2
...
v1.0.0              (Major release)
        v1.0.1      (patch / bugfix)
        v1.0.2
        ...

    v1.1.0          (Minor Release)
        v1.1.1      (patch / bugfix)
        v1.1.2
        ...

    v1.2.0          (Minor Release)
    ...

v2.0.0              (Major Release)