Semantic versioning

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Introduction

Semantic versioning or version semantic management, also referred as [1] is a conventional naming system used to specify the version of a software, a plugin, a library or any other technology with a dot-separated 3 numbers pattern starting from 0 until infinity.

12.345.678

Each digit implies a type of change from the previous version. In order :

1. The first digit stands for a major change
2. The second digit stands for a minor change
3. The third digit stands for a correction or a patch

major.minor.correction

This conventional naming tries to resolve 2 important development issues :

• backwards compatibility : using an operating system as a reference, a new software is backwards-compatible if its N version works with Windows 8 and its N+1 version too. On the opposite, a software isn't backwards-compatible if its N version works with Windows 8 but its N+1 version requires Windows 10.
• dependencies: softwares often rely on other softwares, plugins or libraries to work. For example, a website that can't work before a specific version of a web browser is dependant on the web browser version.