Artifact version naming

Version numbers become important when you have larger installations.

The following list shows the basic principles of version naming:

• Version numbers should grow monotonically, that is, become larger

• They should be comparable to each other, and it should be easy to see which version is newer

• Use the same scheme for all your artifacts

  This usually translates to a version number with three or four parts:

  • The first is major—changes here signal major changes in the code

  • The second is for minor changes, which are backward API compatible

  • The third is for bug fixes

  • The fourth can be a build number

While this might seem simple, it is a sufficiently complex area to have created a standardization effort in the form of SemVer, or Semantic Versioning. The full specification can be read at http://semver.org.

It is convenient that all installable artifacts have a proper release number and a corresponding tag in the source code management system.

Some tools don't work this way. Maven, the Java...