@best_username_ever mentioned Semantic Versioning. It’s an actual spec. Not everyone follows it, and it doesn’t make sense for a lot of things, and far too many people are dogmatic about it. But it’s a good thing to read, and it’s not long.
A related, but not tightly coupled, spec is Changelog. Used together, and used correctly these two are nice for users.
I really dislike calver for like libraries and apis. For something like Firefox it doesn’t matter as much. But for a library? I want to know if this version has breaking changes.
I’m with you; I prefer date versioning for many things. Semver does work really well for things with exposed APIs; it’s a stretch to justify using them with user tools, and especially GUI tools. Semver is used to great effect in Go - which is how it should be use: mainly by the language’s module management system. Outside of that, it’s human readable, but like XML, its main value is to machines, and only secondarily to humans.
Calendar versioning is far more human-oriented, and so more useful for things without exposed APIs or module tooling.
@best_username_ever mentioned Semantic Versioning. It’s an actual spec. Not everyone follows it, and it doesn’t make sense for a lot of things, and far too many people are dogmatic about it. But it’s a good thing to read, and it’s not long.
A related, but not tightly coupled, spec is Changelog. Used together, and used correctly these two are nice for users.
I really like Calendar Versioning CalVer.
Gives so much more meaning to version numbers. Immediately obvious how old, and from when.
Nobody knows when Firefox 97 released. If it were
22.2you’d know it’s from February 2022.It doesn’t conflict with semver either. You can use
y.M.<release>. (I would prefer usingyy.MM.but leading 0 is not semver.)I really dislike calver for like libraries and apis. For something like Firefox it doesn’t matter as much. But for a library? I want to know if this version has breaking changes.
I’m with you; I prefer date versioning for many things. Semver does work really well for things with exposed APIs; it’s a stretch to justify using them with user tools, and especially GUI tools. Semver is used to great effect in Go - which is how it should be use: mainly by the language’s module management system. Outside of that, it’s human readable, but like XML, its main value is to machines, and only secondarily to humans.
Calendar versioning is far more human-oriented, and so more useful for things without exposed APIs or module tooling.